Bitcoin Still at $11,500, Surpassing 25K Locked in DeFi
On Thursday, the spot Bitcoin (BTC) market was somehow dull. However, it does not indicate that it is not moving, holders of the crypto are increasingly plowing it into decentralized finance.
In the past day, BTC’s price changed slightly. The most famous cryptocurrency in the crypto market is back in $11,500 territory – just like how it was last Wednesday. That happened after shortly bottoming to $11,274 on spot exchanges like Coinbase.
But according to Chris Thomas, the head of digital assets for Swissquote Bank, the state of the options market continues to hint that traders anticipate a bumpier Bitcoin ride for the long term. He stated, “Implied volatility has edged higher, but only slightly. This shows that traders are still anticipating another big move, hence preferring long volatility strategies.”
CEO of digital asset liquidity provider Tritum, John Willock, expects Bitcoin to move a lot higher before the end of the year. However, it will not happen at a steady upward trend.
Willock explained, “There are quite a few psychological barriers to break along the way, especially once we get to $15,000.”
He also said that if the recent pace keeps going on, there might be a $16,000 price mark for this year.
Aside from that, Swissquote’s Thomas thinks that the options market is currently displaying fewer individual traders. Then, the increase of the retail-friendly platform Debirit in Bitcoin options open interest – outstanding contracts; against more institutional-focused CME’s relative stagnation.
Debirit is an upstart crypto-only derivatives platform. On the other hand, CME is a trading stalwart used by the biggest financial players for all kinds of commodities bets.
Plowing BTC into DeFi
The top two cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ether (ETH), went up on Thursday. It recently trades around $394 and surged 1.3% in 24 hours.
The number of Bitcoin locked in decentralized finance or DeFi exceeded 25,000 BTC on Monday. Also, it is recently at 27,027, based on the data from the aggregator DeFi Pulse.
Moreover, the top place for parking BTC in DeFi are Wrapped Bitcoin or wBTC. This lets investors use crypto on the Ethereum network. More than 21,000 BTC is locked in WBTC, by far its largest DeFi use.
Chief Technical Officer for Crypto Trustology, Mark Hornsby, noted that Bitcoin’s role in DeFi might be bullish as investors become comfortable about its role as the dominant cryptocurrency. Then, it will lock more of it inside Ethereum’s network.
Blockchain Investment
Meanwhile, KPMG published a report foreseeing that blockchain will be one of five emerging technology sectors to have increased investment from enterprises for the following year.
Called the Enterprise Reboot, the KPMG International and HFS Research compiled the report. It shows a survey of 900 executives from organizations on the Forbes’ Global 2000 list of the most massive public companies with over $1 billion in annual revenue.
As it found, investment in blockchain declined 63% because of the pandemic, the report predicts that the sector, together with artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, 5G, and process automation technologies, will experience an increased investment. And this is due to companies seeking to gain a competitive advantage in the post-COVID-19 business climate.
