Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent institutional investor-driven rally has steadily pushed its price to new all-time highs and while investors are intensely focused on BTC’s price action, a number of altcoins have also secured new multi-year highs. On. Feb. 10, the total crypto market capitalization hit a new high at $1.42 trillion less than a week after Tesla disclosed that it purchased $1.5 billion worth of BTC. Despite being the center of attention for the past few months, Bitcoin’s market dominance has actually decreased from 70.2% on Jan. 13 to its current reading at 61.5%. Historical data shows that when Bitcoin dominance …

On Feb. 10 Binance Coin (BNB) hit a new all-time high at $148 after the native exchange token rallied 121% since the start of the week. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that BNB rose from $35.37 on Jan. 11 to $148, a 256% increase in less than a month. Three reasons for the explosive growth in the price of BNB include the recent surge in trading volume to a new record high, the expansion of DeFi related protocols to the Binance Smart Chain, and a steadily expanding ecosystem which is supported by new partnerships and integrations. Surging volume …

As decentralized finance grows in prominence, a battle of the DEXs is brewing between several of the top protocols like Uniswap (UNI), SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Curve DAO (CRV) as the growing list of platforms vie for investor liquidity and transactions on the network. In terms of total value locked, DeFi lending platforms currently dominate the space with the top 3 positions currently occupied by Maker (MKR), AAVE, and Compound (COMP). Decentralized exchanges hold the next three positions with Curve DAO recently surpassing Uniswap to rank fourth in terms of TVL. An added boost of attention for CRV came on Feb. …

Bitcoin (BTC) price continues to defy gravity and its strong bullish breakouts frequently result in short sellers needing to cover their positions in a hurry. A repeat of this happened on Feb. 9 when Bitcoin soared on the news of Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase. Bybt data shows that about $1.34 billion worth of Bitcoin futures positions were liquidated due to the sharp rally. Another notable event was the launch of CME Ether (ETH) futures on Feb. 8. Several traders feared that the launch would send Ether price tumbling, similar to the weakness seen in Bitcoin shortly after the launch …

ConsenSys, one of the most prominent Ethereum software companies, has launched an updated version of AirSwap, a peer-to-peer exchange that promotes full decentralization and guaranteed prices. ConsenSys introduced the new AirSwap on Tuesday, culminating “Phase II” of its development roadmap. The technical upgrades were based on AirSwap Improvement Proposals, or AIPs, which help the community select and prioritize new development projects on the network. The upgraded exchange will protect traders from both front-running and price slippage by leveraging the request-for-quote, or RFQ, protocol and atomic swaps for settlement, ConsenSys tells Cointelegraph. The company expects RFQ models will capture roughly 40% …

Decentralized finance has exploded over the past 12 months. The swapping, staking and yield farming successes have been well touted. The DeFi market cap has reached $45 billion, and there’s over $28 billion total value locked in DeFi today. That’s up from $600 million in January 2020 — a 4,300% increase. As with all nascent technology, new money flowing into a sector attracts talent, innovation and the best entrepreneurs. Whether we like it or not, the record-high token prices will also attract the attention of mainstream media and Wall Street. This cocktail of factors, coupled with the glitz and glam …

In the traditional investing world ‘unicorn’ is a term used by venture capitalists to describe a privately held startup valued at more than $1 billion. Typically these startups have strong fundamentals and oftentimes a first-mover advantage that helps them rapidly rise in value to become prized investment opportunities for yield-seeking funds. Some of the best-known unicorns include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a private rocket and spacecraft manufacturer with a valuation of $46 billion, and Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange with a current valuation of $8 billion. While the world's attention has been focused on the Coronavirus pandemic, the outcome of …

Launched in September 2020, PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) running on Binance Smart Chain. Instead of allowing its users to trade ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens, the DEX focuses exclusively on Binance Chain BEP20. By using an automated market maker (AMM), the DEX allows tokens to be exchanged with no need for order books. This is quite similar to Uniswap's liquidy pools which are automated by smart contracts. In addition to its traditional functions, PancakeSwap offers staking for its liquidity providers. There's also a lottery for users holding 10 or more CAKE and by opting for a chain with much …

Theta (THETA) has launched ThetaSwap, the blockchain’s first decentralized exchange platform, according to an announcement issued on Friday. ThetaSwap v1 users will reportedly be able to swap Theta-based TNT-20 tokens in much the same way as is the case for automated market maker services like Uniswap and SushiSwap for ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum chain. With the launch of ThetaSwap v1, the project says it is hopeful that users will become incentivized to interact with the TNT-20 token standard. Apart from TNT-20 tokens and Theta Fuel (TFUEL) — the Theta blockchain “gas coin” — future upgrades to the DEX will …

The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies surged to $1.139 trillion on Feb. 4, just short of silver’s total market cap at $1.5 trillion. While the crypto market cap is still way below that of gold, Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone said in a report that Bitcoin (BTC) has found strong support at $30,000 and it may now rally to $50,000 and higher. However, some institutional investors who had invested at lower levels and are sitting on huge profits are taking some money off the table. United Kingdom-based Ruffer Investment Management said it had initially invested about $600 million in …

Aave (AAVE) price has increased by 76% since the beginning of February and today the DeFi-token hit a new all-time high of $520. Currently Aave is the second-ranked DeFi platform by total value locked (TVL) and the protocol continues to gain users and outperform its competitors. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that AAVE rose from $284 on Feb. 1 to its current value of $510 as it’s 24-hour trading volume reached $2.4 billion. The latest rally kicked off on Jan. 28 when the platform announced the release of the Aave v2 migration tool which allows users to easily …

Finance Redefined is Cointelegraph's weekly DeFi-centric newsletter, delivered to subscribers every Wednesday. The end of January saw a string of interesting announcements from projects building innovative products that may well push DeFi forward. And more price gains of course. To briefly touch on the market side of things, this does feel like a much quieter rally than three years ago. Most things are going up, with some DeFi projects being particularly lucky, but it’s nowhere close to the insane gains we saw early in 2018. Although Dogecoin did set a new all-time high, so there’s that. Still, the crypto market …