DeFi Tokens Sink as Bitcoin Price Holds Steady

By Jose Antonio Lanz

It’s been a rough day for DeFi tokens, the cryptocurrencies associated with decentralized finance protocols, which have been all the rage in crypto in 2020.

After a promising recovery in line with Bitcoin's performance last week, DeFi tokens haven’t been able to keep up, and most are down in a big way today. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is holding steady at around $10,700 per coin in another ho-hum day for hodlers.

The top 100 most capitalized coins in DeFi, as ranked by metrics site CoinGecko, are almost all in the red today. And some of the biggest coins, such as yearn.finance’s YFI, Chainlink (LINK), and UMA, are the worst-performing assets of the day: YFI lost 20%, LINK fell 10%, and UMA dropped by nearly 10%.

Zooming out, the day’s worst-performing DeFi token, Hakka, is down more than 30%. It’s the kind of drop that would give any Wall Street investor a heart attack but isn’t out of the ordinary in the volatile world of crypto—and especially the still very young niche of DeFi and yield farming.

Bitcoin, by comparison, is as stable as it gets right now. And that’s even after the $200 million hack of cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin. Normally, such hacks send shockwaves across the crypto market. But not this time. Bitcoin continues to trade sideways following last week's recovery.

The $11,000 price mark is still the next hurdle to beat for Bitcoin bulls. For a few hours yesterday, Bitcoin seemed determined to break that barrier, but the market couldn't keep the momentum.

It’s a familiar pattern for Bitcoin OGs. September has historically been a bearish month for Bitcoin. For the last three years, there’s been a notable dip in price each September.

September is usually bearish for Bitcoin. Image: TradingView

Meanwhile, of the top 10 cryptocurrencies, only one saw positive gains over the last 24 hours: BNB, the native token of the largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance. It went up 3.22% to reach $28.20. All other assets, including Ethereum and XRP, have seen marginal losses on the day.

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