Yearn Finance – the veteran decentralized finance protocol – announced that they would be buying back their native token YFI aggressively. In return, the price has already skyrocketed.
In a tweet from yesterday, Yearn Finance revealed that they’d purchased $7,526,343 worth of YFI from the open market at an average price of $26,651.
Yearn has purchased $7,526,343 worth of YFI from the open market. We got 282.4 YFI (0.77% of total supply) at an average price of $26,651. More YFI has been bought back in the past month than in the prior year.
They also revealed that Yearn’s treasury has “more than $45 million saved up and with earnings stronger than ever, expect much more aggressive buybacks.”
In a separate Twitter thread, analyst Adam Cochran detailed the move and also outlined other initiatives that Yearn is working on, including a revised tokenomics “to do a fee distribution to holders, currently looking at veCRV model xSushi models.”
All this seems to have had a considerable impact on the price of its native token – YFI.
At the time of this writing, YFI trades at around $27,000. Just a couple of days ago, the token dipped to around $19,000.
This gives an increase of about 41% in the past three days, 30% of which came in the past 24 hours alone.
Chart by TradingView
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A lackluster cryptocurrency market did little in offsetting Yearn Finance’s bullish bias as the price of its governance token YFI reached new record highs in USD terms on May 11 — just shy of $70,000.
YFI price hits new highs in USD
The YFI/USD exchange rate added $6,258, or 10.02%, to reach $68,748 ahead of the London opening bell. The pair quickly retraced lower as traders decided to realize their profits, hitting roughly $67,067 as of 0736 UTC. Nevertheless, the drop appeared marginal compared to the prevailing uptrend, hinting that YFI could continue its upward momentum following a short-term consolidation period.
The token performed equally well against Bitcoin (BTC), the flagship cryptocurrency whose own uptrend slowed down after hitting a milestone high of roughly $65,000 last month. Tuesday morning, the YFI/BTC exchange rate was near its five-month high of 1.192 BTC. Meanwhile, at its intraday peak, the pair’s bid was 1.247 BTC, up 58%.
YFI/BTC reaches 5-month high. Source: Tradingview
The massive upside moves in the Yearn Finance token market appeared as its top rivals underperformed severely. At first, Bitcoin continued to show weakness after failing to log a breakout above a psychological resistance level of $60,000. Its strong positive correlation with other top digital assets also pushed their prices lower.
For instance, Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, plunged back below $4,000 on profit-taking sentiment.
Meanwhile, the biggest losers on a 24-hour adjusted timeframe were Dogecoin (DOGE), XRP, Polkadot (DOT), and Litecoin (LTC). Each fell within the range of 9%-12%, again due to traders’ inclination to withdraw profits after the tokens’ supersonic price rallies in the previous sessions.
Yearn Finance’s YFI was comparatively weaker so far in 2021. The token would surge by almost 160% compared to its altcoin peers’ thousands of percentages worth of upside gains. For instance, Dogecoin remained a scene-stealer for most of the first and second quarters, rising by more than 19,000% to eventually outshine other large-cap altcoins.
Technically, YFI served as a hedge as the rest of the cryptocurrency market returned from their overbought levels. But looking closely, what worked in the favor for the Yearn Finance token — at least in the current quarter — is its ability to cast aside a flurry of its major issues.
Banking infrastructure for DeFi
In retrospect, Yearn had a rocky beginning in 2021. Its main problem heading into the year was funding deficits. The Yearn Finance group had no reserves set aside for its core contributors that limited it from gaining any upside exposure. Andre Cronje, the creator of the Yearn Finance protocol, even shared his frustration by writing a blog titled, “Building in DeFi Sucks”.
However, the following weeks witnessed huge community involvement to solve the reserves issue. The YFI holders introduced two proposals and passed them through a democratic vote. The first “Buyback and Build” upgrade assisted in introducing a buyback program that added YFI to their treasury for redistribution.
Meanwhile, the second “Funding Yearn’s Future” proposal minted 6,666 new YFI tokens to create the protocol treasury, with a primary focus on funding core contributors.
The next major upgrade came in the form of Yearn V2. Its mid-January launch earlier met with negative reviews due to user interface issues. But the team responded promptly to address those concerns to a successful conclusion. In the months following the fix, the total value locked inside the Yearn Finance pool has climbed to $4.243 billion.
Source: Yearn.Science
The most notable changes Yearn V2 brought to the Yearn Finance protocol included a new fee structure, multi-strategy vaults, and highly differentiated strategies with the help of a new ecosystem partnership with Cream. YFI prices responded bullishly to the events.
Frax Finance, a fractional-algorithmic stablecoin protocol, has added its fixed yield asset FXB to Yearn vaults. Meanwhile, Alchemix is also building a credit system atop their protocol, confirming that Yearn is becoming a banking alternative to the decentralized finance ecosystem.
Absolutely epic H6 close on $YFI, no other bnf futes showing this degree of rel strength at the moment, and $YFIBTC looking primed for continuation. pic.twitter.com/hutUBRONuJ
— cuban (@cubantobacco) May 11, 2021
The YFI rally takes its long-term bullish cues from the said growth prospects.
Following the latest all-time high just shy of $65,000 and a subsequent $4,000 retracement, bitcoin has calmed down around $63,000. However, its dominance continues to suffer and is below 53%. This comes amid an impressive increase from Ethereum, which neared $2,500 and marked yet another record of its own.
Bitcoin’s ATH and $4K Turbulence
As reported two days ago, the primary cryptocurrency had finally broken above its long-time nemesis at $60,000. Furthermore, the asset continued upwards to new all-time high levels on the same day at about $63,000.
Yesterday seemed even more bullish as BTC added roughly $2,000 of value to its latest ATH record of almost $65,000 (on Bitstamp).
However, the infamous volatility struck again, perhaps led by the anticipation for the public listing of the largest US crypto exchange – Coinbase.
Approximately at the time when it became official, bitcoin dropped by nearly $4,000 from its peak and tested $61,000. Nevertheless, the asset has bounced off and currently stands just above $63,000.
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Despite its bullish week, though, bitcoin’s dominance over the market keeps declining. The metric comparing BTC’s market capitalization with all other cryptocurrencies has fallen beneath 53% for the first time in more than two years.
Just for comparison, bitcoin’s dominance was well above 72% in early January 2021.
BTCUSD. Source: TradingView
Ethereum Aims at $2,500
Most alternative coins followed their leader north in the past few days, which led to new all-time high records for Binance Coin, Cardano, Dogecoin, and Ethereum. Although the first two have declined by roughly 5% since yesterday, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has only enhanced its performance.
ETH spiked once more and exceeded $2,480 for its latest ATH. However, it has failed to overcome $2,500 so far and has retraced slightly to about $2,470.
Uniswap is also well in the green from the top ten coins. A 6.5% surge has taken UNI above $38. Chainlink has surged by nearly 10% and, with a price tag of almost $41, is back in the top ten.
More price pumps come from DigiByte (22%), WazirX (20%), VeChain (18%), Yearn.Finance (15%), Stacks (15%), Ravencoin (13%), Avalanche (10%), and Maker (10%).
Ultimately, the total crypto market cap has remained well above $2.2 trillion.
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Bitcoin’s struggles around $50,000 continue as the asset has failed to overcome it decisively. The situation within the altcoin market is somewhat similar, with ETH dropping below $1,700. However, the top five digital assets by market cap see some notable rotations, with ADA falling to fifth place.
Bitcoin Indecisive Around $50K
The primary cryptocurrency lost some value at the end of last week when it dipped to $46,000 on a few occasions. With this performance, the asset demonstrated a high correlation with the US stock market, which also declined at the same time.
However, when Wall Street rested during the weekend, BTC initiated an impressive leg up that resulted in jumping above $50,000 and an intraday high of nearly $52,000 yesterday.
This coincided with minor gains visible for the futures markets for the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the Dow after the Senate passed another COVID-19 relief bill – this time for $1.9 trillion.
Nevertheless, the situation has reversed since that high, and bitcoin has lost over $2,000, while the Nasdaq futures contracts have headed south again. As a result, the cryptocurrency has dipped below $50,000 again, with expectations for enhanced volatility once Wall Street opens for trading later today.
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BTCUSD. Source: TradingView
Top 5 Rotations, ETH Drops Below $1.7K
Most alternative coins followed BTC’s positive weekend, with Ethereum surging past the $1,700 price tag. However, ETH has declined since its peak at $1,760 and is currently down to $1,680.
Other major altcoins are charting slight losses, though nothing so serious, at the time of this writing. Polkadot, Ripple, and Litecoin have remained relatively still on a 24-hour scale. Although Cardano has not lost any substantial chunks of value since yesterday, ADA has lost its top three spot in terms of market cap.
The continuous minting of new USDT (Tether) and BNB’s 2% gains have helped both assets to surpass ADA. Consequently, Tether is back in the top three, while Binance Coin takes fourth place, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
UNI is the most significant gainer from the top ten with an 8% increase to above $33. Uniswap’s governance token is almost 50% up in a week.
Cryptocurrency Market Heatmap. Source; Coin360
Further fluctuations are evident from Enjin Coin (35%), Decentraland (26%), YFI (15%), Horizen (15%), and REN (11%) going north while ZKSwap (-10%), THORChain (-8%), and NEM (-6%) are heading south.
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Disclaimer: Information found on CryptoPotato is those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of CryptoPotato on whether to buy, sell, or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use provided information at your own risk. See Disclaimer for more information.
Yearn Finance (YFI) and Cover Protocol (COVER) announced today that the merger process between both, initiated last November, will come to an end. The breakup between both has resulted in a big hit for the price of COVER.
Yearn Finance Breaks up With Cover Protocol
In November 2020, Yearn Finance’s founder and arguably one of the most influential figures in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi) announced that they will join forces with the market coverage provider Cover Protocol.
Today, however, the team announced its decision to end the merger process.
We have decided to end the previously announced merger process of Yearn and Cover. Both protocols will continue to operate independently. yVault depositors who have previously purchased Cover protection are unaffected by this.
In a now-deleted tweet, Cronje remarked that “this was very sad to see. I had very high regard, trust, and faith in the Cover team. Lesson learned. Won’t trust them again.”
Shortly after that, however, he removed it and said the following:
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Deleted my previous tweet. It was an emotional response. Twitter isn’t the place for that. I often forget ethics and money don’t mix.
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) March 5, 2021
On the other side, the team behind Cover Protocol hasn’t provided any commentary on the matter at the time of this writing. They just said that they’ve “parted ways with Yearn” while clarifying that users can still buy Yearn coverage on Cover Protocol.
COVER Price Tanks as a Result
COVER’s price has been on an impressive run in 2021 as its price increased from around $380 at the start of the year to an all-time high of around $1,700 about two weeks ago. Since then, it’s been mainly down hill.
Nevertheless, the news of the ‘divorce’ definitely took a toll on COVER’s dollar value. The cryptocurrency is currently down about 40% at the time of this writing.
COVER/BUSD. Source: TradingView
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Yearn Finance, one of DeFi’s landmark projects and also the first coin to truly flip Bitcoin’s price on multiple occasions, managed to surge above $52K earlier today before correcting slightly to where it’s currently trading.
Yearn Finance is undoubtedly one of the benchmark projects for the space of decentralized finance (DeFi).
YFI, the ecosystem’s native token, was initially supposed to be nothing but a governance token that has absolutely no face value. In fact, Andre Cronje, the creator of Yearn Finance, explicitly said that it wouldn’t be traded on Uniswap and it won’t have any value other than $0.
The market had different plans for it, though, as it quickly caught speed and became one of the (if not the) best-performing assets in 2020.
As CryptoPotato reported back during last year, the project also set the tone for various others that followed in its footsteps with different value propositions.
In any case, today, YFI is making headlines with an impressive increase of around 13%.
YFI/USD, FTX. Source: TradingView
As seen in the chart above, the cryptocurrency not only surpassed BTC in terms of USD value but also surged past $52,000 before retracing to where it’s currently trading.
One of the reasons for this performance might be the fact that the world’s largest asset manager, Grayscale, incorporated a new YFI entity.
It was set up as a STatutory Trust in Delaware two days ago, on February 10th. With it, the company now has 33 registered trusts in the state.
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Yearn Finance’s governance token YFI reached a new milestone on Friday as its price crossed over the $50,000-mark for the first time in history.
The gains appeared as Grayscale Investments, a New York-based cryptocurrency management firm, registered an LLC for a prospective Yearn Finance Trust. That prompted traders to raise their bids for YFI, given Grayscale’s critical role in shooting Bitcoin prices upwards after accumulating almost 3 percent of the flagship cryptocurrency’s active supply for its proprietary Bitcoin Trust.
The YFI Bull, Explained
Grayscale’s core business model offers accredited investors the opportunity to gain exposure in cryptocurrency markets by purchasing shares of its open-ended private trusts that hold the digital assets in concern. For instance, its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, or GBTC, has 649,130 BTC to date and its per-share cost is around $48 over-the-counter.
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The company accumulates additional crypto-assets based on institutional demand. Therefore, analysts typically consider its buyouts as bullish for the concerned assets. As it shows interest in launching a Yearn Finance trust, bulls believe the move would bring high-profile investments into the decentralized finance sector.
Yearn Finance off to close the day at record levels. Source: YFIUSD on TradingView.com
Yearn Finance off to close the day at record levels. Source: YFIUSD on TradingView.com
YFI peaked at $50,592 on Friday. Its price is now comparable to Bitcoin, which peaked above $49,000 on the same day.
Traders anticipate the price to grow higher. A pseudonymous analyst on Twitter stated that YFI could push for a $150,000 valuation based on its technical readings against Bitcoin. In retrospect, the YFI/BTC exchange rate showed signs of breaking out of a bullish channel, leaving the analyst with a strong upside bias.
Yearn Finance shows upside strength against Bitcoin, as shown by GalaxyBTC. Source: YFIBTC on TradingView.com
Yearn Finance shows upside strength against Bitcoin, as shown by GalaxyBTC. Source: YFIBTC on TradingView.com
“YFI coin supply on exchanges has been gradually decreasing since November 2020 where it saw the highest Coin supply on exchanges since launch and price bottomed out, suggesting that capitulation has taken place,” said analysts at Santiment.
“This gradual drop in YFI is healthy and positive as there’s less sell pressure on exchanges,” they added.
The decentralized finance sector continues to grow with an impressive all-time high of over $24 billion locked. Additionally, the Binance DeFi Composite Index, measuring the performance of numerous DeFi coins, also marked a new ATH today.
Binance DeFi Index To New Highs
Launched in August 2020, the DeFi Composite Index tracks and measures the performance of “a basket” of DeFi assets in what the company described as a “standardized way.”
“The composite price indices are combinations of different underlying instruments intended to measure the overall market (or subset) performance over time. The indices price is usually calculated as a weighted average price of the components.”
It’s worth noting that the Binance DeFi Composite Index tracks DeFi tokens listed on the leading exchange and is denominated in Tether (USDT).
Some of the coins with the largest shares in the index include LINK (14%), YFI (7.5%), MKR (7%), Uni (6.5%), AAVE (6%), SNX (6%), and COMP (4.8%). Naturally, as the prices of most DeFi tokens have exploded recently, so has the index.
Earlier today, it jumped to an all-time high of $1,261.5. Although it has retraced slightly since then to $1,230, this is still a 70% increase from the bottom last week during the Monday crash.
Binance DeFi Composite Index Price Performance. Source: Binance
TVL Above $24B For A New Record
The total value locked in various DeFi projects is another indicator of the sector’s growth. As of writing these lines, it has skyrocketed to a new record of $24.57 billion.
This amount represents the dollar equivalent value of all cryptocurrency assets locked in smart contracts on decentralized lending and borrowing platforms.
Total Value Locked In DeFi Projects. Source: DeFiPulse
The DeFi sector exploded in popularity last year. As the graph above illustrates, the TVL dabbled with $1 billion for several months before it finally conquered it in the summer. However, it hasn’t looked back since and has only broken above other milestones.
Interestingly, the lending platform Maker has surpassed the most widely-used decentralized exchange Uniswap and has taken the first spot with nearly $4.2 billion.
Aave takes the third spot with $3.4 billion, followed by Compound ($3 billion), Curve Finance ($2.08 billion), and SushiSwap ($2 billion).
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BTC’s somewhat adverse weekend ended with the asset bottoming below $34,000, but bitcoin has bounced off since then and topped $36,000. New all-time highs for Binance Coin and Chainlink have helped the market cap to conquer the coveted $1 trillion level again.
Bitcoin Tops $36K
The primary cryptocurrency was riding high above $38,000 before the weekend, but the bears didn’t allow any further increases. Just the opposite, they drove BTC’s price south on a few occasions.
The asset dipped to $34,500 before recovering rather quickly to $38,000. However, bitcoin failed to maintain its price at such a high level and dumped once again. This time, it bottomed below $34,000 (on Bitstamp).
Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency has regained some traction since then and currently trades above $36,000. This was the first major resistance level in BTC’s way up, according to the technical aspects.
The following obstacles are situated at $36,700, $38,000, $39,700, and $40,000. Alternatively, BTC could rely on the support levels at $34,800, $34,000, and $33,130 if another retracement arrives.
BTCUSD. Source: TradingView
New ATHs For BNB And Link
Most large-cap altcoins have remained relatively steady on a 24-hour scale. Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Polkadot, Cardano, and Stellar have shown little-to-no movements. As a result, ETH is at $1,220, XRP – $0.28, BCH – $480, DOT – $17.5, ADA – $0.38, and XLM – $0.3.
However, Chainlink and Binance Coin have stolen the show with massive gains and new records. LINK has exploded by almost 10% and painted a new all-time high above $23 earlier today.
Just a day after Binance announced the 14th token burn, the native cryptocurrency of the leading exchange went for a new record of nearly $47.
Further gains are evident from lower- and mid-cap altcoins. The Graph leads the way with a 40% surge. Aragon (37%), Horizen (34%), OMG Network (33%), Kusama (30%), Waves (28%), Curve DAO Token (20%), Ocean Protocol (18%), Voyager Token (15%), Solana (13%), and Yearn.Finance (12%) follow.
More impressive is what happened to the DeFi space in the past couple of days. Since January 16th, the total value locked in various protocols increased by about 10% and currently sits above $24 billion. Over the past 24 hours, numerous tokens have charted massive increases. Apart from the ones included above, some of the other ones include the first version of YAM which is up by almost 100%, Swerve’s SWRV is up by 75%, and CREAM – by more than 30%.
Overall, the crypto market cap has overcome the $1 trillion mark after dipping to $960 billion yesterday.
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Disclaimer: Information found on CryptoPotato is those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of CryptoPotato on whether to buy, sell, or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use provided information at your own risk. See Disclaimer for more information.
Yearn.finance (YFI), a leading decentralized finance protocol, has been hyping up the launch of its v2 Vaults.
While Yearn.finance is an umbrella DeFi ecosystem, it is currently best known for its Vaults product. Vaults are contracts where users can deposit cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, USDC, YFI, and others to earn a regular yield paid in the coin they deposit. Vaults allow holders of cryptocurrency to earn passive income on their holdings. The v2 iteration of these Vaults are expected to boost returns, and as a result, drive more capital to YFI holders and more value to the overall Yearn ecosystem.
Related Reading: Wall Street Veteran Kickstarts Own Bitcoin Fund With $25m Investment
YFI Could Soon See New Vaults
Yearn.finance’s (YFI) v2 Vaults have long been rumored. Details about them have been somewhat scarce but they are expected to drive more yields to Vault depositors through more advanced smart contracts and more moving parts to increase capital efficiency.
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Project founder Andre Cronje recently shared the tweet below, seemingly showing the potential yields for new v2 Vault strategies.
As can be seen, the yields offered are much higher than those seen in traditional finance, along with a fair bit higher than those seen on most DeFi applications.
For instance, the USDC v2 Vault reports having a 55.7% APY, which is a few orders of magnitude above what is offered in traditional finance today.
v2 .@bantg pic.twitter.com/apKthQacmj
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) January 13, 2021
Yields are expected to boost YFI’s value proposition as it will drive more capital into these Vaults, which will increase the dividends that YFI stakers earn.
Related Reading: DeFi Founder Targeted in $8m Hack Says He Has His Hacker’s IP
Cross-Protocol Integrations
The yields offered on Yearn.finance Vaults (and the dividends accrued to YFI by extension) will likely be boosted by cross-protocol integrations.
Cronje commented last week on these integrations:
“With Cream v2 (Iron Bank), Alpha Homora v2, and Yearn v2, all vaults become leveraged vaults, and cross asset strategies become viable. Deposit 1k DAI can deposit 1k DAI and 1k USDC into Alpha Curve or 1k DAI and 1 ETH into Alpha Sushiswap borrowed indirectly via Iron Bank. These cross platform strategies allow up to 90x leverage on stable coins and 80x leverage on ETH and allows users to either sell and compound or accumulate the asset. As more collateral is introduced into Iron Bank and Alpha v2 yield becomes agnostic.”
YFI is up a few percent on the recent announcements and tweets.
Related Reading: 3 Bitcoin On-Chain Trends Show a Macro Bull Market Is Brewing
Featured Image from Unsplash
Chart from TradingView.com
Price Tags: YFIUSD, YFIBTC
Yearn.finance Founder Andre Cronje Drops Hints About v2 Vaults
