In our first weekly digest of crypto events in 2021, we decided to cover both the end of 2020 and the beginning of the new year. How did 2020 end in the crypto space, and how did 2021 begin? We witnessed an unprecedented rise in the value of BTC and ETH, the Cover being hacked, and a new yEarn.Finance project emerging.
BTC And ETH Skyrocket
In the first week of January, the price of Bitcoin rose to unprecedented levels. At the time of creating this article, the first digital currency is trading at $30,059. Since the beginning of the year, the value of BTC has been breaking one record after another, starting from $30,000, and up to $33,000. The capitalization of the cryptocurrency market approached its absolute maximum, which was recorded back in January 2018 due to the growing popularity of altcoins and the ICO boom of that time. Now the Bitcoin dominance index is 70% according to CoinGecko.
Along with the growth of Bitcoin, the rate of the second most capitalized cryptocurrency, Ethereum, also increased. The price of Ethereum raised above $900, and at the time of us writing this, the coin is trading at $955. The last time Ethereum was traded around that level was February 2018. Also keep in mind that over the past year, Ethereum price has risen nearly 500%, while Bitcoin showed a 366% growth. But the market value of ETH is still 43% below the all-time high recorded three years ago in early 2018.
DeFi Activity Is Booming
The creator of yEarn.Finance introduced the new yCredit DeFi project, which will allow depositing ERC-20 standard tokens and receiving credit in yCredit coins for 99.5% of the amount deposited. Now only the pilot version of the protocol is available. Let’s not forget that earlier the creator of yEarn.Finance announced the takeover of their age-old competitor, the decentralized exchange SushiSwap.
In the end of 2020, DeFi showed a slight bump. The decentralized financial market finished 2020 on the rise, as the total volume of assets (TVL) in DeFi jumped from $13.43 bln to $14.6 bln on New Year’s Eve. Even though the $20 bln market cap that analysts were dreaming about was never reached, the TVL increase gives us hope for even more growth this year.
Monero, Zcash And Dash Removed From Bittrex Listing
Bittrex will remove anonymous coins from listing. As early as January 15, the exchange will stop trading Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH). This is not the first time cryptocurrency exchanges stop trading confidentiality-oriented coins. Earlier, exchanges in South Korea stopped supporting such coins due to FATF requirements. To be fair, it is worth noting that anonymity is one of the key criteria for cryptocurrencies, and it is this feature of digital finance that attracts a lot of users.
So that’s what the week was like. Perception of cryptocurrencies in the world is changing daily, but we see the popularity of digital assets growing every day, and we believe that digitalization is the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment