2021 was a breakout year for the cryptocurrency market in many respects and most investors are absolutely thrilled that Bitcoin (BTC) price established a new all-time high of $68,789. In the same timeframe, Ether (ETH) went on a parabolic rally which saw its price gain 565% from Jan. 1 to hit a record high at $4,859 on Nov. 10. While it was a banner year for large cap cryptocurrencies, some of the biggest gains and most impactful developments came from the altcoin market where decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) rallied by thousands of percent and helped to usher …

In a presentation made during the Singapore Fintech Festival, Annerie Vreugdenhil, chief innovation officer of ING, announced the firm is working on a trial of its decentralized finance, or DeFi, peer-to-peer lending protocol with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets. Vreugdenhil said the following in regards to the development, as reported by Ledger Insights: We are looking into peer-to-peer lending in a DeFi kind of setup. But then not on Bitcoins. What is interesting to us is how you can probably create peer-to-peer lending or open up lending capabilities with different kinds of collateral. So with different ways of …

The world of decentralized gaming has seen significant growth in 2021 as the rise of play-to-earn (P2E) gaming merged with NFTs to open the first pathway to the Metaverse. Aavegotchi is currently making inroads in the blockchain-based gaming sector with a somewhat novel approach that incorporates features from P2E gaming, NFTs and decentralized finance (DeFi). Data from TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $1.56 on Oct. 1, the price of GHST, Aavegotchi's native token, has rallied 53% to a daily high at $2.40 on Oct. 29 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 45% to $135.8 million. Three reasons …

Annual percentage yields, or APY, on crypto borrowing and lending platform Aave have surged to record levels after capital withdrawals sent the decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocol into a liquidity crunch. At the time of writing, variable APY on borrowing stablecoin Dai via Aave has surged to 24.88%, compared to approximately 6.50% the day prior. According to cryptocurrency researcher Igor Igamberdiev, blockchain personality Justin Sun was responsible for at least billions of dollars in withdrawals in the past few hours. Aave's total value locked, or TVL, fell to $14.7 billion from $17.89 billion the day prior, based on data from …

Ecosystem development funds have become one of the latest market-moving trends in the crypto sector and protocols with large treasuries have discovered that reward and incentive programs are one of the best ways to attract new users and protocols to a project. One protocol that has recently seen its token price rally following the release of an ecosystem development grant is Harmony (ONE), a blockchain protocol focused on improving scalability between networks. The project uses cross-sharded contracts and a cross-chain infrastructure between multiple blockchains including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Data from Cointelegraph …

Bullish sentiment is running high across the cryptocurrency market on Oct. 20 as Bitcoin’s (BTC) surge to a new all-time high at $67,000 thrust the digital asset into uncharted territory, with investors closely watching to see how altcoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens react to the move. The DeFi sector has also benefited from BTC’s bullish breakout, and today, the total value locked (TVL) across all DeFi protocols climbed to a new record high. According to data from Defi Llama, which collects data from DeFi protocols across all major blockchain networks, including Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), …

On Thursday Avalanche’s (AVAX) price hit a new all-time high at $68.89, and over the last few months, the project has risen to challenge the Ethereum network’s dominance among smart contract platforms. According to the project’s website, the layer-one protocol is capable of surpassing 4,500 transactions per second (TPS) with a time to finality of less than 2 seconds. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $32.10 on Sept. 7, the price of AVAX has rallied 111% to establish a new all-time high on S as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 200% to …

Welcome to the latest iteration of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. Just as quickly as the summer departed from our calendars, millions of funds were hacked from the wallets of Cream Finance. This has been another jam-packed week in the DeFi space. Here are some top picks for the biggest stories in what is my debut appearance as Finance Redefined’s newsletter writer. What you’re reading is the shorter, snappier version of the newsletter. For the full roundup of DeFi developments across the week delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe below. Cream of the crop This week’s cream-of-the-crop story (pun intended) was …

After a blistering start to 2021 saw token valuations and trading volumes surge to ignite the current bull market, the DeFi sector as a whole took a break while the NFT sector stepped into the limelight. While investors' attention was elsewhere, DeFi prices have had time to consolidate and project developers were able to focus on protocol upgrades and in the past month, DeFi-related tokens have been gaining traction and look poised for a breakout in September. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that multiple DeFi tokens, including Aave (AAVE), Synthetix (SNX), YFI and SushiSwap (SUSHI) have rallied nearly …

A consortium of leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols announced a collaborative $100 million financial inclusion venture titled “DeFi for the People.” The DeFi applications involved in the project — Aave, SushiSwap, Curve, 0x and PoolTogether, among others — will together provide up to $100 million in educational initiatives, grants and incentives in an effort to educate individuals globally about decentralized finance. The initiative — built on the Celo ecosystem — identified a lack of inclusivity and accessibility in the traditional financial markets and, in turn, aims to utilize the decentralized nature of crypto and blockchain to provide finance to the …

The nonfungible token (NFT) sector of the cryptocurrency ecosystem has made waves that splashed across the headlines of even mainstream news outlets in 2021. Celebrities, musicians, sports teams, established auction houses and even fast-food restaurants got involved with the creation and/or sale of one-of-a-kind digital items. With the top NFT marketplaces like OpenSea seeing record-breaking trading volumes as projects like CryptoPunks and Pudgy Penguins see tens of millions of dollars in value exchanged daily. However, it can be challenging to know which projects have the ability to hold or increase in value long-term and which ones are likely to fizzle …

The nonfungible token, or NFT, sector took the world by storm in 2021 as crypto and corporate sector influencers, globally recognized companies and popular sports teams embraced the growing digital collectible trend. After a brief sector-wide pullback which coincided with the market-wide declines seen at the beginning of May, the NFT sector roared back to life as collectibles like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) have been selling for record-breaking prices. One project that has benefitted from the recent bull market in the NFT sector is Aavegotchi (GHST), a decentralized finance- (DeFi)-focused NFT ecosystem that runs on …