Ethereum
Price
The number one Altcoins, in market cap, and undisputed leader in DeFi had an exciting week. After reaching a two year high price of $620 USD this week, it followed Bitcoin down to its previous support of $480.00 USD. But in 3 days it has rose again to over $600.00 USD. An amazing ride. Ethereum has by some accounts outperformed all other altcoins this year.
Ethereum 2.0
The transition to 2.0 has been so far successful with the necessary deposits of Ethereum 524,000 tokens to start the Proof of Stake Chain, Beacon Chain. In actuality this number was far exceeded with deposits totaling over 800,000 units Ethereum. If you need more info about Ethereum changing to Proof of Stake and Beacon Chain, see this post
Decentralized Finance on Ethereum
Ethereum Blockchain continues to be the leader in decentralized finance. According to the website “DeFi Today” there is over 13 Billion USD locked up in DeFi on Ethereum, mainly as Ethereum, but a significant portion of it as Bitcoin. The MakerDao continues to be a major player with over 2.9 Billion USD worth of Ethereum locked in Smart Contracts. There was a recent reduction in Ethereum locked in Smart Contracts like MakerDao, Curve, even JustSwap. I suspect it was due to a combination of profit taking and the desire to participate in staking on the Beacon Chain of Ethereum 2.0.
Decentralized Exchanges on Ethereum are still major players
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Decentralized exchanges continue their near dominance with some reduction in Ethereum locked in Smart Contracts no doubt due to investors withdrawal Ing their Ethereum to stake it on the Beacon Chain of Ethereum 2.0 fame. But UniSwap still has almost 2.8 Billion USD of Assets in USD and the total average daily volume on exchanges, on Ethereum are estimated at 5,050 million. The other exchanges continue to have impressive numbers with Sushiswap having an estimated 741 million USD in assets deposited, Curve 514 million, Oc 354 million, Balancer 167 million, dYdX 145 million and Kyber 135 million just to name the top seven decentralized exchanges.
Summary
Decentralized Finance on Ethereum continues to be a major financial investment class, which although dwarfed by the traditional markets, which are measured in the Trillions of dollars, most likely is still making a significant impact on the lives of thousands of investors across the world. Ethereum and Bitcoin are two of the most widely held assets in the world with the number of individual investors holding them exceeding the number holding Gold, by some estimates. In addition, Bitcoin and Ethereum have outperformed every other asset in the world, this year. This sobering conclusion alone should attract your attention and convince you to own one of them in your investment portfolio or cryptocurrency portfolio.
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