Bitcoin and Ethereum Lag While DeFi Tokens dYdX and Maker See Gains

By Mat Di Salvo

A number of decentralized finance (DeFi) assets surged on Tuesday while major cryptocurrencies—including Bitcoin and Ethereum—experienced losses.

Decentralized lender dYdX, which runs on Ethereum, was at the time of writing trading for $3.34, having gained nearly 7% in 24 hours. Over the week, the protocol's native token, ETHDYDX, had boomed by 42%, CoinGecko data showed.

Elsewhere, Maker (MKR) also experienced a surge: at the time of writing, it was only up over 1%, trading for $1,366, but had shot up earlier on Tuesday morning Eastern Time to a high of $1,423.

And decentralized exchange PancakeSwap (CAKE) was also up nearly 3%, coming in at a price of $2.24.

DeFi refers to the projects in the cryptocurrency space which want to replace traditional financial services, such as borrowing, lending or banking.

Such projects are new, experimental and prone to hacks—which means respective coins and tokens are volatile.

Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market cap, had lost more than 2% of its value by the time this story was published, and was trading hands for $36,049.

And Ethereum, which last week pushed past $2,000, was down nearly 3%. It is priced at $2,041 per coin.

Last week ETH saw major gains on news that BlackRock Advisors, a division of the Wall Street titan, was preparing to file an application for an Ethereum ETF. The iShares Ethereum Trust application is BlackRock's first official application for an Ethereum ETF.

Within 24 hours after the filing of the iShares Ethereum Trust application, the price of Ethereum crossed the $2,000 mark, a level it had not seen since July 2023. The price of Ethereum experienced a substantial increase, with gains reported at over 8%. Moreover, the trading volume surged by 259%, indicating a significant rise in market activity.

Concurrently, the market capitalization of Ethereum increased by a little more than 10%—reflecting a marked growth in investor confidence and market valuation following the news of the filing.

Elsewhere, major coins and tokens were having a rough morning. Solana (SOL), which last week blew up in value, was trading little over $56 per coin, up less than 1%. Even when ETF optimism cooled for Bitcoin and Ethereum, Solana has held onto its gains.

SOL has surged nearly 160% over 30 days. For a few days, it briefly overtook the market capitalization of major stablecoin USDC. But it has since dropped below it again. As of this writing, SOL has a market cap of $23.8 billion and USDC has a market cap of $23.9 billion.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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