Curve Finance, MakerDAO, and Lido Lead DeFi Token Rally

Leading decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens in Curve Finance (CRV), Maker (MKR), and Lido Finance (LDO) have all posted significant gains of at least 6% over the past 24 hours.

CRV, the token powering the like-asset decentralized crypto exchange Curve Finance is up nearly 7% over the past 24 hours. 

At the time of this writing, CRV is the second-leading gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It’s changing hands at around $0.90, with a whopping 116% increase in trading volume to $77.33 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

Despite today’s handy gains, CRV is down 94.1% from its all-time high of $15.37 recorded in August 2020.

MKR, the DAO token responsible for creating and maintaining the decentralized stablecoin DAI, has also gained over 5% in the last 24 hours and currently trades at around $1,078. The 55th-largest cryptocurrency boasts a market capitalization of $966.6 million.

LDO, the native token of the popular staking platform Lido Finance, is up 6.4% over the past 24 hours and currently changes hands at around $1.50. 

The DeFi token enjoys a market capitalization of nearly $469 million but has shed 79% from its all-time high of $7.3.

DeFi tokens blow up shorts

MKR leads this batch’s token liquidations, with $719,460, followed by CRV with $423,390 over the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass.  

Of the total liquidations, the majority of them were blown-out short positions.

Total Value Locked (TVL), a metric for measuring how much money is held in various protocols across DeFi, on Ethereum has increased by 1.03%  to $54.17 billion over the past 24 hours, per data from DefiLlama. 

The Fed’s market

Following U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) report last Thursday, financial markets, crypto included, entered a sluggish phase. 

With peaking inflation across the globe and in the United States, the U.S Federal Reserve is likely expected to increase the interest rates by another 75 basis points at its next meeting.

Though increased interest rates would result in juicy bond yields, it also hinders investors' interest in high-risk assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies.