During the last few days, numerous native assets of decentralized financial protocols ("DeFi tokens") witnessed impressive gains. Should these pumps be attributed to technological fundamentals or market hype?
Flagship assets of "DeFi spring"
On Feb. 4, 2021, some major DeFi tokens are going through double-digit gains. For instance, AAVE, the new core native token of Aave Protocol DeFi, spiked 36 percent in 24 hours. Also, its liquidity size surged by 11 percent in two days only to reach the amazing $4 billion threshold.
This ambitious milestone is accomplished amidst a powerful upsurge of the Ethereum (ETH) price over $1,650 and the rallies of some other DeFi protocols.
In the case of Compound Finance (COMP), the first DeFi token ever to enter the Top 25 crypto assets by market capitalization (Q2, 2020), the 26 percent pump can be explained by a $6 billion threshold in aggregated in-protocol liquidity and a recent partnership with Ledger, top-notch crypto hardware wallets producer.
The upsurge of SUSHI, the main token of Uniswap's controversial competitor SushiSwap, was the most dramatic. Today it added more than 10 percent in almost no time. The SUSHI price spiked from $14.83 to $16.44 in less than one hour. Yesterday, ex-Citi analyst John Todaro noticed that SushiSwap (SUSHI) generates more than $1,200,000 in fees every day.
First large caps, then Bitcoin (BTC) and DeFi
As covered by U.Today previously, during the last few days, many large-capitalization altcoins pumped very hard. It started from XRP token, then new life was injected into Cardano (ADA) and Ethereum (ETH). While the first one surged above its three-year high, Ethereum (ETH) printed a new all-time high.
Also, Binance Coin (BNB) set a new price record over $53 on the news of the launch of Binance Pay, a PayPal competitor with six cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum.
The story is different with Dogecoin (DOGE), which had been pumped 1,000% by Redditors, but then flash-crashed. Today, it was revitalized as its name replaced "Bitcoin" in Elon Musk's Twitter bio.