DeFi Tokens SUSHI, FTM, AAVE Enjoy Strong Week as Bitcoin, Ethereum Slump

While the bulk of the crypto market has seen prices slump over the past week after an initial pre-Christmas rally, decentralized finance (DeFi) coins have defied the downtrend.

Leading the pack is SUSHI, the token of the decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap. At the time of writing, it's sitting at $9.68, up 52% over the past seven days—though that includes a 1% slip over the past 24 hours.

It's closely followed by FTM, the token of DeFi protocol Fantom, which is currently priced at $2.19—up 36.5% over the past seven days.

Also putting in strong performances over the last week are AAVE (up 23% to $255.39), OSMO, the token of Cosmos-based DEX Osmosis (up 13.5% to $5.95) and Uniswap's UNI (up 8.8% to $17.64).

Crypto's holiday rally stalls

The DeFi surge comes as the wider crypto market pulled back following a mini rally leading into Christmas, when Bitcoin returned to the $50,000 mark. Over the Christmas weekend, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies spiked to $2.51 trillion, while Bitcoin hit $51,570 and Ethereum rose to $4,100 on December 27.

Since then, prices have retraced, with the total cryptocurrency market cap dropping to $2.34 trillion, with Bitcoin dropping to $47,400 and Ethereum pulling back to $3,720. In all, Bitcoin is now down 31% from its all-time high of just over $69,000 in November.

With the NFT market booming, DeFi adoption growing, and ambitious DAOs forming and pooling their crypto with a shared purpose—all against the backdrop of an uncertain U.S. regulatory framework—it's anyone's guess what the crypto markets might do in the first few weeks of 2022.