Nick Chong
The majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) coins have seen extremely strong rallies since the start of 2021.
Analysis by crypto-asset analyst Ceteris Paribus found that since the start of the year, like literally two weeks ago, the average DeFi large-cap has seen 75 percent gains. This includes coins such as Aave (AAVE), Compound (COMP), SushiSwap (SUSHI), and more.
One crypto-asset has largely been kept out of this rally, though: Curve DAO Token (CRV).
The native token of the Curve decentralized exchange was, at least before this week, still barely above its late-2020 lows. The narrative was that because there were yield farmers actively farming and dumping CRV, the cryptocurrency would remain suppressed for an extended period of time.
But this past week, CRV has begun to surge.
Curve (CRV) surges higher
According to CryptoSlate market data, CRV has ripped in excess of 125 percent higher in the past seven days, as can be seen in the chart below.
In the past day alone, Curve’s native Ethereum-based token has enjoyed a 50 percent rally. This makes it easily the top-performing crypto-asset in the top 100 by market capitalization.
CRV has surged to a $300 million circulating market capitalization and a $6 billion fully-diluted market capitalization.
This rally for CRV comes amid a number of fundamental trends:
- Curve has been releasing a number of new trading pairs to account for more esoteric assets that need markets. For instance, users can now trade stETH, Lido’s token represented Ethereum staked on ETH2, for ETH via Curve. The cryptocurrency was previously illiquid. Other markets include a swap market for Aave’s interest-bearing assets.
- Curve just rolled out a collaboration with Yearn.finance that will allow any user to deploy trading pools for more esoteric and long-tail assets to allow for more utility in DeFi.
- Trading volumes on the decentralized exchange have shot higher due to the introduction of new pools and as investors look to more easily trade between assets.
CRV’s move higher has meant that yield farmers have been able to earn more on the platform. As a result, there is now $2.15 billion worth of capital locked in Curve, far above where it was just months ago.
CRV’s rally underscores the ongoing repricing or re-rating taking place in the DeFi space.
As investor George Harrap noted, CRV joins 1INCH and SUSHI as top decentralized finance-focused assets that have doubled in the past week.
Things which the market has learned were massively undervalued from a week ago and have at least 2x’d:$CRV
$1INCH$SUSHI— George Harrap (@George_harrap) January 17, 2021
Curve DAO Token, currently ranked #76 by market cap, is up 47.28% over the past 24 hours. CRV has a market cap of $321.8M with a 24 hour volume of $589.23M.
Curve DAO Token Price Chart
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