Market Wrap: Bitcoin Retests $10.8K; Total Value Locked in DeFi Hits $11B

Bitcoin's price tested $10,800 to close out September while despite some market deflation, investors continue pushing crypto into DeFi.

Bitcoin’s price dipped down to as low as $10,657 Wednesday, bouncing into the $10,800 range and settling to $10,701 as of press time. 

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Jason Lau, chief operating officer of cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin, said that while bitcoin wasn’t able to hit fresh 2020 highs in September, he’s optimistic the cryptocurrency can still push upward heading into the fourth quarter of 2020. "Bitcoin's price momentum is still positive, with its pullbacks leaving higher highs,” Lau told CoinDesk. “This is signalling a possible further continuation of this upwards move.”

Quantitative trading firm QCP Capital wrote in a September-capping investor note that bitcoin and ether were able to stay above “key” price points for the month, which it sees as a pragmatic sign. “The key support from the early month lows of $10,000 on BTC and $310 on ETH both saw substantial buying demand,” QCP wrote. “This prevented any cascading short gamma selling into quarter-end, which had been our fear if those levels broke.” 

Constantin Kogan, partner at cryptocurrency fund-of-funds BitBull Capital, noted a jump in the number of new entities on the Bitcoin network, its highest level since October 2018, as a sign of positive sentiment. New unique addresses in Bitcoin are described by data aggregator Glassnode as “entities that appeared for the first time in a transaction of the native coin in the network.”

“We're seeing a spike in activity by new participants coming into BTC not yet reflected in price. It doesn't happen often,” Kogan told CoinDesk regarding the new entities metric. “This is what traders call a divergence; in this case the trend looks more bullish.” 

Over in the bitcoin futures market, funding rates are now mostly in positive territory on major derivatives venues. This is a reversal from the past week and a sign bullish traders are again entering the market, according to OKCoin’s Lau.

“Bitcoin perpetual swaps funding rates have started turning positive,” Lau told CoinDesk. “This indicates that investors are more willing to go long at current price levels.”

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down Wednesday trading around $355 and slipping 0.32% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

The amount of cryptocurrency “locked” or held in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, topped $11 billion on Tuesday, according to data aggregator DeFi Pulse.

Almost 20% of the total locked is in decentralized exchange Uniswap, which despite declining volumes topped $2.29 billion in total liquidity on Tuesday. Alessandro Andreotti, a cryptocurrency over-the-counter trader based in Italy, said that although the DeFi market may be cooling since June’s explosion of protocol token launches, its ascension will continue - although perhaps at not so fast a pace. 

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“I think DeFi will keep on growing, even though its growth until now has been parabolic,” said Andreotti. “Many new projects and exchanges are coming out right now, so I see no signs of it slowing down at this time.”

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly in the green on Wednesday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

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