The demand for Bitcoin (BTC) is fueling sentiment across the crypto trade, driving the capital locked on-chain to over $100 billion on March 9.
In keeping with knowledge from DefiLlama, the worldwide whole worth locked (TVL) in decentralized finance protocols reached $100.1 billion, with greater than $10 billion in quantity over the previous 24 hours. Nevertheless, these figures nonetheless fall in need of the $189 billion report from November 2021.
Liquid staking protocol Lido is main the charts with $38.7 billion locked on-chain, adopted by the staking ecosystem EigenLayer, and the AAVE protocol with $11.5 billion in TVL.
That is the primary time in almost two years that DeFi TVL has exceeded the $100 billion mark. The uplifting move seems to be attributable to a return of optimistic sentiment within the crypto markets because the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January.
The institutional demand for Bitcoin ETFs drove the cryptocurrency to new all-time highs this week, topping $70,000 on March 8. In keeping with BitMEX Analysis, belongings in Bitcoin ETFs have surged to $28 billion that very same day. The evaluation excludes belongings from Grayscale’s fund, which was transformed to an ETF in January from an over-the-counter (OTC) product.
On X (previously Twitter), rumors flow into about OTC buying and selling platforms working out of Bitcoin and turning to public exchanges to meet orders from purchasers. OTC desks sometimes cater to large-volume merchants, corresponding to institutional buyers.
A number of centralized crypto exchanges, together with Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bybit, have skilled outages after Bitcoin crossed $60,000, attributable to a rise in buying and selling quantity. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek mentioned the alternate employed 480 extra buyer representatives to deal with the surge in demand.
“As a result of there’s a lot retail curiosity and the worth motion is transferring so quick, the entire algorithmic buying and selling corporations are vastly rising the speed of order placements and cancels they wish to ship to the matching engine to keep up their positions,” instructed Cointelegraph Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, chief technique officer and technical lead for buying and selling at dydx alternate.
Bitcoin drives capital into memecoins
Bitcoin’s good points have sparked a surge in memecoins over the earlier days. In keeping with knowledge compiled by Bitget Analysis, memecoin KORRA has seen a 577% rise within the final seven days, adopted by a 235% surge in Ribbit (RIBBIT) and PUG AI (PUGAI) hovering 232% in the identical interval.
Well-liked tokens corresponding to Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) have seen good points of 168% and 165%, respectively. Memecoins’ market capitalization stands at $61 billion on the time of writing, as per Bitget knowledge.
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