The crypto industry is experiencing a surge in demand for Bitcoin, leading to a significant increase in the capital locked on-chain, which has surpassed $100 billion as of March 9. Data from DefiLlama reveals that the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols worldwide has reached $100.1 billion, with a trading volume of over $10 billion in the past 24 hours.
Although these figures are impressive, they still fall short of the record high of $189 billion set in November 2021. The current leader in terms of locked capital is the liquid staking protocol Lido, with $38.7 billion locked on-chain. EigenLayer and the Aave protocol follow closely behind, with over $11 billion locked each.
This milestone of surpassing $100 billion TVL in DeFi has not been achieved in nearly two years. The increase in capital locked can be attributed to the return of positive sentiment in the crypto markets since the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January. The institutional demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs has propelled the cryptocurrency to new all-time highs, reaching $70,000 on March 8.
According to BitMEX Research, assets in Bitcoin ETFs reached $28 billion on March 8. However, this analysis excludes assets from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, which transitioned to an ETF in January from its previous over-the-counter (OTC) product. Rumors have been circulating on social media about OTC trading platforms running out of Bitcoin and turning to public exchanges to fulfill client orders. OTC desks primarily cater to institutional investors and large-volume traders.
The surge in trading volume and demand for Bitcoin has caused several centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bybit, to experience outages. In response, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek revealed that the exchange has hired an additional 480 customer representatives to handle the increased demand.
The recent gains in Bitcoin have also led to a surge in memecoin prices. Memecoin Korra (KORRA) has seen a remarkable 577% increase in the last seven days, followed by Ribbit (RIBBIT) with a 235% surge and PUG AI (PUGAI) with a 232% jump during the same period. Popular tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) have also experienced significant gains of 168% and 165%, respectively. The total market capitalization of memecoins currently stands at $61 billion.
As a result of this memecoin trend, Dogecoin (DOGE) and SHIB have emerged as top tokens with market caps of $26 billion and $20 billion, respectively.
In other news, there is a growing debate about whether children should be introduced to Bitcoin through children’s books. Some argue that educating children about Bitcoin from an early age can help them understand the importance of financial literacy and the potential of cryptocurrencies. However, others express concerns about the risks associated with exposing children to the volatile nature of the crypto market.