The crypto market turned green after enduring heavy losses in September. The global cryptocurrency market cap finally crossed the $2 trillion mark as Bitcoin [BTC] and the altcoin troupe climbed higher. Many in the community believed the market is poised for a rally in the coming months.
Sharing a similar sentiment, Andrew Kang, Co-founder of Mechanism Capital said crypto might be destined for a period of hyper-growth. The exec based his argument on the rising metrics with respect to Defi’s total value locked [TVL], unique Non-Fungible Tokens [NFT], stablecoin market-cap, and others.
Crypto Metrics Exploding
Decentralized finance [DeFi] has been gaining a significant amount of market momentum, defying all the odds. DeFi registered an all-time high near $200 billion in the first week of September right before the market went on a downtrend. Since then, the TVL figures have recovered significantly. According to analytics portal DefiLlama, the total value locked in the overall DeFi market is at $189.6 billion at press time.
TVL on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain also exhibited similar behavior as it momentarily dipped last month. The figures bounced back and logged at $134.1 billion. Solana [SOL] too witnessed a similar slump briefly before climbing back up to $10.94 billion. Riding along a similar trajectory, Fantom [FTM] soared to an impressive $2.37 billion in total value locked.
Another catalyst that has driven the crypto market to great heights is the red-hot Non-Fungible Token [NFT] sector. From bringing the digital art world into the spotlight to incorporate luxury fashion brands, the space has attracted both retail as well as institution market participants in its ecosystem. As observed by data analysis website, DappRadar, NFTs saw a whopping $5.2 billion worth of transaction volume being traded in August this year. The blog post also noted that the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea continued to drive more than 90% of trade volume on the Ethereum network.
Soaring Stablecoin market cap
Tether [USDT] has continued to lead the stablecoin market capitalization. The dominant stablecoin is currently hovering at $68.04 billion by market cap. However, of late, its dominance is increasingly challenged by its contenders such as USDC. This is evident from the data analytics report released by skew which shows a growth of 6% in the market cap of the USDC coins during September.
Furthermore, stablecoin has seen different applications in the crypto industry. Its ability to move value between crypto exchanges as well as acting as collateral in the derivatives market has led to its increased adoption. Other use-cases are medium of exchange, store of value, cross-border payments, etc.