The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector faced its first real challenge during last week’s market sell-off that saw more than $1 trillion wiped from the global cryptocurrency market cap as traders feverishly ran for the safety of stablecoins amid tumbling prices. Despite rapidly declining token prices, the nascent DeFi sector held its own as decentralized exchanges experienced a record $11.7 billion in trading volume on May 19. Uniswap (UNI) led with $5.7 billion in volume, followed by SushiSwap (SUSHI) which saw $2.8 billion in 24-hour trading volume. According to the recent DeFi Uncovered report from Glassnode, blue-chip DeFi tokens including, UNI, …

A strong bull market tends to attract speculators and newbie traders who hop on to the rally with an aim to get rich quickly. In their eagerness to earn huge profits, traders throw caution out of the window and take on excessive leverage. While this strategy is fruitful during the asset’s up-move, sharp corrections wipe out most accounts due to the use of massive leverage. Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent market drop below $30,000 caused the Bitcoin futures open interest to plummet from $27 billion to $11 billion. This suggests that several leveraged traders would have taken a huge hit. Although painful, …

The world’s largest decentralized exchange keeps growing and the newly-launched third iteration has now surpassed version two in terms of daily volumes. In addition to v3 topping the daily transaction volumes of v2, both have individually surpassed Bitcoin in terms of daily fee generation. The move was observed by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams who commented that both are earning more daily and weekly fees than Bitcoin miners. Data from Cryptofees showed that Uniswap v3, which was launched on May 5, generated $4.5 million with v2 generating $3.8 million in fees for the day. Bitcoin was behind both of them at …

A decentralized crypto exchange is being launched that is specifically designed to cater to r/Wallstreetbets and other like-minded investing groups. The creators of the Wallstreetbets.com DEX say distrust in centralized financial institutions has never been higher following the GameStop short squeeze earlier this year, which prompted the trading app Robinhood to limit transactions. Overall, the DEX intends to deliver a platform where users can trade what they want and when — complete with self-custody, no middlemen and no companies taking fees. The infrastructure that’s underpinning Wallstreetbets.com is a fork of Uniswap, but a number of changes have been made. The …

The sentiment in the crypto sector is extremely bearish. On May 23, several altcoins dipped below the May 19 panic low, suggesting that traders continue to sell at every opportunity. However, Bitcoin (BTC) did not violate its May 19 panic low at $29,257.95, indicating buying at lower levels. John Bollinger, the creator of the Bollinger Bands indicator, believes Bitcoin could be forming a W-shaped bottom, which may have a good risk to reward ratio. In another positive sign, PlanB, the creator of the stock-to-flow Bitcoin price model, said that a large part of the selling has been done by traders …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) was one of the driving forces behind this year's surge in the cryptocurrency market as projects like Yearn.finance (YFI), Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI) quickly climbed to ‘blue-chip unicorn’ status and older protocols like Maker (MKR) and Compound (COMP) saw their prices skyrocket to new record highs. But as the old saying goes, “markets take the escalator up and the elevator down,” and given the volatile nature of the crypto market, it seems that the elevator is in a free fall. Previously hot DeFi sector tokens have on average seen their token values fall by at least …

After Bitcoin’s (BTC) capitulation on May 19 and the pullback on May 20, the next big question on everyone's mind is whether the correction is over or will the downtrend resume. Let’s study the supply and demand picture to gain more insight. Chainalysis chief economist Philip Gradwell pointed out that whales who had purchased more than 1,000 Bitcoin after 2017 added 34,000 Bitcoin to their holdings on May 18 and 19. This suggests the whales bought during the crypto meltdown. Additional on-chain data also suggests that the huge spike in over-the-counter Bitcoin outflow is a signal of accumulation by institutions …

Cryptocurrency investors are still picking up the pieces from the May 19 market-wide implosion which saw Bitcoin (BTC) drop to an unexpected low at $30,000. Post-mortem analysis now shows that the correction catalyzed a mad dash among traders running for the exits as the cascading sell-off resulted in a record 10,525 BTC liquidated across all exchanges. Altcoins were quick to follow suit as they joined Bitcoin in its plunge and hardly a token was left unscathed by the downturn as a wider-sell-off rippled across the market, resulting in a $437 billion haircut to the total market capitalization to $1.672 trillion, …

Despite launching to the Ethereum mainnet just two weeks ago, Uniswap v3 has already overtaken SushiSwap to rank as the second-largest Ethereum-based decentralized exchange by trade volume. On May 20, Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that v3 had hosted 81% of the volume hosted by v2 over 24 hours earlier this week. The researcher shared data showing that as of May 16, v3 had processed 15% more weekly volume than major Ethereum-based DEX SushiSwap, beating out Sushi’s $5.6 billion with $6.5 billion. 0x ranked behind SushiSwap with $3 billion, followed by Curve with $1.9 billion, and Balancer …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) massive bloodbath on May 19 resulted in panic selling across the board. Several major altcoins nosedived between 25% to 50% during the day. The extent of the fall shows that many large traders may have dumped their positions and leverage traders may have been roasted. In a report to its clients on Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase analysts pointed out that institutional investors were abandoning Bitcoin in favor of gold. Considering the volatility ratio of Bitcoin to gold, JP Morgan believes Bitcoin’s current fair value is $35,000. The massive fall today is likely to scare several institutional investors and delay …

The fundamental value drivers of cryptocurrencies have been questioned a lot since the 2017 bull run. Professional investors that are considering an allocation into digital assets are wondering what the assets’ real value is. A recent report by crypto-asset manager Iconic Funds and Cryptology Asset Group, a leading European asset manager for crypto assets and blockchain-based businesses, aims to shed light on this topic. The fundamental value of each cryptocurrency depends on its unique use case, which makes it impossible to apply a single valuation method to every token. For example, Bitcoin (BTC) can be analyzed with traditional commodity valuation …

Bitcoin (BTC) plummeted to an intraday low near $42,000 today, dropping 35% from its all-time high at $64,849.27. Over the weekend the selling intensified as news that Tesla may have sold its Bitcoin holdings made waves, and even after this was proven to be untrue, Bitcoin’s market dominance had still been pulled down to a three-year low below 40%. While this decline in Bitcoin may have scared new investors, stock-to-flow creator PlanB said the performance of the current bull phase is still better than the 2017 bull run. PlanB also warned investors to expect several 30% dips during Bitcoin’s climb …