As demand for Bitcoin surges, sentiments across the crypto industry are lifted, pushing the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols beyond $100 billion on March 9.
DefiLlama data reveals that the global TVL in DeFi protocols has reached $100.1 billion, registering over $10 billion in volume in the last 24 hours at the time of reporting. Nevertheless, these figures still fall short of the November 2021 record of $189 billion.
Liquid staking protocol Lido leads with $38.7 billion locked on-chain, followed by the EigenLayer staking ecosystem and the Aave protocol, each securing over $11 billion.
This marks the first instance in almost two years that DeFi TVL has surpassed the $100 billion threshold. The increase appears linked to the renewed positive sentiment in crypto markets since the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January.
The institutional demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs propelled the cryptocurrency to new all-time highs, surpassing $70,000 on March 8. BitMEX Research notes that assets in Bitcoin ETFs reached $28 billion on March 8, excluding assets from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, converted to an ETF in January from an over-the-counter (OTC) product.
[1/4] Bitcoin ETF Flow – 08 March 2024
All data in. $223m positive net flow for thew day
The assets of the ETFs excluding GBTC are now over $28 billion, this is now larger than GBTC's assets for the first time pic.twitter.com/5BlBTu4WLn
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) March 9, 2024
Social media platform X has seen rumors circulating about OTC trading platforms facing a shortage of Bitcoin, resorting to public exchanges to fulfill client orders. OTC desks, typically serving large-volume traders like institutional investors, have experienced increased demand.
OTC desks are running out of Bitcoin.
Suppliers must return to public exchanges to source new Bitcoin when demand is overwhelming.
The supply & demand pressure is building. pic.twitter.com/qoAiX8WW0A
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) March 4, 2024
Several centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bybit, encountered outages after Bitcoin surpassed $60,000 due to heightened trading volume. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek reported hiring 480 more customer representatives to manage the surge in demand.
Apologies to everyone for long CS response times. We have already hired an extra 480 customer service reps to deal with the increased volumes, but it does take time to train & onboard them all.
We will continue to scale until we reach sub 60s response time to all queries.
If…
— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) March 8, 2024
Bitcoin’s gains triggered a rise in memecoin prices. CoinMarketCap data indicates a 660% increase in the last 7 days for memecoin Korra (KORRA), followed by a 198% surge for Ribbit (RIBBIT) and a 383% jump for PUG AI (PUGAI) in the same period.
Popular tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) have seen gains of 57% and 116%, respectively. The memecoin market capitalization stands at $63 billion at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Due to the memecoin trend, Dogecoin (DOGE) and SHIB are now among the top 1 tokens by market cap, holding $25.5 billion and $20.5 billion, respectively.
