Yearn Finance (YFI) Surges to 3X the Value of Bitcoin, Reaching Another All-Time High in Anticipation of yETH launch

Yearn.finance (YFI) token has seen a new all-time high, reaching $39,600 on Binance, just a day after its previous new high of $38,000. The Yearn.finance token has recently surged 25 percent, reaching a new all-time high today. 

At press time, the YFI token has retraced slightly as Yearn bears take over, trading at $34,000. With the recent surge in popularity of the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, YFI was one of the DeFi tokens that benefited from it.

The YFI token has surged to a value that is 3 times that of Bitcoin (BTC), which is currently trading at $11,694 at press time. Bitcoin witnessed a slight uptick, reaching $11,800, however dipping back to the $11,500 levels shortly after, failing to surpass the $12,000.

YFI currently has a market capitalization of over 1 billion, and currently ranks twentieth-seventh in the cryptocurrency market. The current value of the DeFi industry has surpassed $8 billion in total value locked (TVL). The rise in popularity of the DeFi industry could be attributed to the reward incentives of lending and yield farming. 

Yearn.finance has been entering multiple price discoveries in the past month. Before reaching its current new all-time high, the YFI token held highs of $38,000, $18,000, and $16,666. 

YFI token’s bull run comes at a time when DeFi is increasingly dominant in the market, outperforming Bitcoin’s performance by a mile. The governance token’s surge is speculated to be partially due to the YAM project, a yield farming protocol that doubled in total value before it collapsed due to the discovery of a contract bug. 

Founder of Yearn.finance Andre Cronje spoke up about his DeFi project’s native token in a blog post and clarified that YFI was a “completely valueless 0 supply token.” However, this doesn’t seem to have stopped market bulls from making predictions regarding the token. Needless to say, the DeFi token has exceeded all expectations by soaring dramatically.

Cardano founder recently stated that the rollout of Cardano’s next phase, Goguen, will enable the network to be extremely competitive in the DeFi sector. 

Anticipation of the yETH vault

Yearn.finance’s yETH vault, which is Yearn.finance’s core product involves the process of seeking the best returns for yield farmers, pooling funds to reduce Ethereum gas fees. Yearn’s vault guarantees the highest returns while minimizing labor and research needed to gain maximal profitability of yield farming. 

Analysts and the crypto community have suspected that the anticipated launch of yETH will drive a bull run in the Ether market. 

Will the Impact of Yearn Finance's yETH Vault on the DeFi Space Last Long?

Yearn.finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has recently launched yETH vault, its core product. The yETH vault enables the process of seeking the best returns for yield farmers, pooling funds to reduce Ethereum gas fees. 

Yield farming in the DeFi space has been seeing a growth in popularity, as crypto whales have been leveraging DeFi protocols to generate high rates of return. Although DeFi enables an ecosystem of decentralized applications to have access to financial products including cryptocurrencies, yield farming is most profitable only to crypto whales, who are able to have a high amount of crypto locked up in DeFi. 

yETH was launched as a part of Yearn.finance’s yVault strategies, which are a set of predefined actions that allow users to deposit funds and automatically send them to liquidity pools. This will then enable high-yield interest where more token rewards are earned by the user. 

The yETH vault strategy involves four steps. Ether (ETH) is first deposited and used as collateral to acquire MakerDAO’s DAI at a 200 percent collateralization rate. Interested would then be earned and the DAI will then be sent to DeFi stablecoin liquidity protocol, Curve Finance (CRV).

After the DAI is sent to Curve Finance, DAI is locked and interest from extra CRV tokens are received, which is then sent to Ether, back to the yETH vault. An analyst recently explained that MakerDAO’s collateralized debt positions (CDPs) are used as a bridge for ETH to be used for yield farming on DeFi. 

What does this mean for DeFi tokens?

According to the analyst, yETH “demonstrates how composable protocols within Ethereum’s ecosystem have become.” He added that yETH accelerates the productivity of idle Ether. 

As the yETH vault strategy involves some of the DeFi tokens, the process would then be bullish for Ethereum (ETH), MakerDAO (DAI), and Yearn.finance (YFI). However, Curve Finance (CRV)’s price would be driven down, as CRV is sold to buy ETH, adding the selling pressure to the token. The analyst added:

“It’s pretty impressive to see how much ETH has already been locked up. yETH’s impact on the space will be long-lasting.”

The Yearn.finance token has already seen multiple all-time highs in the past month, reaching $39,600 recently, more than three times the value of Bitcoin. Analysts and the crypto community previously suspected that the anticipated launch of yETH will drive a bull run in the Ether market.

Ethereum and DeFi Tokens Plummet Amid High Selling Pressure

Ethereum recently took a dip, after almost reaching the highs at $390. Ethereum is currently trading at $343, taking an 8.4 percent dive in the past 24 hours. Popular DeFi tokens, including Yearn.finance (YFI), and Uniswap (UNI) have also witnessed strong corrections in the past few days.

The decentralized finance market has previously outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in August, however, DeFi tokens have been plummeting recently. Yearn.finance and Uniswap have both witnessed a 46 to 48 percent drop, after reaching its monthly high.

Uniswap’s UNI token saw a huge price spike from its launch, as major exchanges listed the token, including Coinbase Pro, Binance, and FTX exchange. Shortly after the launch of the UNI token, Ethereum’s transaction fees have also reached new highs. Gas prices were recorded as high as 700 gwei, due to the network congestion faced due to users claiming Uniswap tokens. Average gas prices are around 416 gwei. 

The Yearn.finance (YFI) token has previously reached its all-time high of $38,000, before plunging down to $24,200 at press time. The anticipation of a DeFi market correction, due to profit-taking has been expected, however, the Ether is still struggling to gain momentum.

Ethereum usually led altcoin rallies, including DeFi tokens, however, Ether has struggled to maintain its performance compared to Bitcoin. Ether remained below $400, while BTC recently rallied to $11,100 before retracing back to under $11,000. 

Ether’s price has declined most likely due to the selling pressure of the DeFi tokens, as the UNI and YFI tokens have suffered a 50 percent correction, most likely due to profit-taking. 

Many DeFi tokens have also slid, with Aave’s LEND token, Synthetic Network Token, also seeing drops in their prices in the past few days as selling pressure increased. 

However, with the stock markets flooding red, and the US dollar losing its grip against foreign currencies, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and the DeFi market could still see the light of day from the push of the traditional markets. 

The stock market faced a sharp sell-off on Monday, led by correcting the hopes and expectations that the economy would be recovering. While the US continues to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, Europe has also started to see a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases, indicating a second wave.

Yearn.finance (YFI) Takes a Hit After Eminence Finance (EMN) Bug—Is this the End for DeFi?

Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance has recently deployed a series of new contracts relating to a new game called Eminence Finance, which has still yet to launch. Although Eminence Finance has no website and has not officially launched yet, Yearn.finance token YFI holders have already deployed capital into the Eminence contracts. 

While the Eminence game project is still under development, Cronje deployed smart contracts as part of his personal process of testing his products on the Ethereum mainnet. The founder noted that the launch of Eminence was still expected to be around three weeks away. 

Many YFI holders who bought the Eminence platform’s token, EMN wanted to get ahead of other investors, to acquire the token early, and wait for the token to rally and sell it at a higher price on the market. Cronje explained:

“The exploit itself was a very simple one, mint a lot of EMN at the tight curve, burn the EMN for one of the other currencies, sell the currency for EMN.”

There was an unfortunate bug in the deployed contracts, allowing a user to withdraw $15 million worth of DAI from the contracts, although the user put in much less. After the $15 million were exploited, $8 million was sent to Cronje’s yearn account. The founder explained that he will be returning the funds to the affect users. Shortly after, due to a vast amount of criticism and threats received, the return process has been handed over to the Yearn treasury. Cronje said:

“The multisig is safer and as such I feel more comfortable with them having the funds. Funds will be returned to holders pre-hack snapshot.”

After the $15 million hack, many YFI holders sold their tokens, and YFI remains to be down by 6 percent in the past 24 hours. YFI is currently trading at $24,132, around 15 percent below the price YFI was trading at before the bug was exploited.

Some investors expressed their loss of faith in Yearn.finance, however, this analyst believes that this “gross negligence” would be quickly forgotten. Alex Kruger commented:

“Fanaticism towards Cronje makes me think the impact of last night’s events will be much less pronounced than it should, and the market will move on fast. But could easily be wrong there. What happened with $EMN represents gross negligence, I’m not the only one who thinks this way.”

Yearn.finance (YFI) Plunges Again Amid Sell-Off Pressure from Strong Drop in yVault Yields

Yearn.finance (YFI) has faced a steep correction lately and has been one of the worst performers in the top 100 cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been able to gain 0.7 percent in the past 24 hours. YFI is currently trading at $18,009, according to CoinGecko, and has seen a 41 percent loss in the past week. 

YFI, which is based on Ethereum, has faced a huge plunge as the users of Yearn.finance’s vault’s returns have been facing a strong drop. Yearn.finance’s yETH vault, its core product was launched in early September. The yETH vault enables the process of seeking the best returns for yield farmers, pooling funds to reduce Ethereum gas fees.

yETH was launched as a part of Yearn.finance’s yVault strategies, which are a set of predefined actions that allow users to deposit funds and automatically send them to liquidity pools. This will then enable high-yield interest where more token rewards are earned by the user.

In the past few weeks, Ethereum-based coins have been dropping due to the yields offered to users through farming have plunged. Venture capital firms have launched industrial-scale farms, which led to a halt in the DeFi farming industry. Yearn.finance’s yCRV/yUSD vault, is offering around 15 percent of an annualized yield, which is a large difference from the 60-100 percent offered previously.

Yearn.finance’s price is currently at its lowest period since it peaked at highs at over $40,000. The massive sell-off of YFI has been affected by the sell-side pressure from its perpetual swaps on platforms including FTX exchange. 

A crypto analyst pointed out that YFI’s next support level to look out for is at $10,000. If the Ethereum-based token breaks beyond this level, Yearn.finance could be valued lower than Bitcoin’s current price, plunging towards $6,000. The analyst said: 

“Not a good look for $YFI. Target at least $10k range, but horizontal support down there is at $6k.”

Yearn.finance plunges after EMN bug

Around a week earlier, Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance has deployed a series of new contracts relating to a new game called Eminence Finance, which later led to a massive loss in capital due to a bug.

A user withdrew $15 million worth of DAI from the contracts, although the user put in much less. After the $15 million hack, many YFI holders sold their tokens, and YFI was down by over 6 percent after the bug was announced. 

DeFi Growth Could be Hindered if US Regulators Go After Decentralized Exchanges

Recently many DeFi tokens have plunged drastically in the past few weeks, with Uniswap’s UNI token and Yearn.finance (YFI) plunging over 38 percent. Uniswap’s hard fork Sushiswap’s SUSHI token plunged even further, over 52 percent in the past week.

The decentralized finance sector has taken the crypto industry by storm, resulting in high Ethereum gas fees, and even taking Ethereum’s addresses and hash rate to a new all-time high. Although DeFi token prices have been crashing, the sector still remains strong as its total value locked is $10 billion. 

Although Ethereum has benefitted from the DeFi industry, the Ethereum blockchain network has been facing congestion issues and high fees, issues that have continued to be unresolved. DeFi could face other problematic issues, including regulation in the future, as recent charges have shed light on DeFi’s possible fate.

Recently, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged the owners of BitMEX crypto exchange, for allegedly operating an illegal exchange, facilitating unregistered trading transactions, and violating rules. BitMEX shortly withdrew a large amount of Bitcoin, worth around $400 million out of the exchange. 

BitMEX owners have announced their intention to fight the US CFTC charges. A spokesperson for HDR Global Trading Limited, the parent company of BitMEX crypto derivatives exchange, said: “We strongly disagree with the US government’s heavy-handed decision to bring these charges, and intend to defend the allegations vigorously.”

John McAfee has also been arrested in Spain and has been charged with the United States Department of Justice for tax evasion. McAfee also leveraged his fame to generate income, by attracting investors for seven initial coin offerings he touted through Twitter. Investigations by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that McAfee made over $23.1 million from recommending the cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter. Federal prosecutors alleged that they were all materially misleading.

The DeFi industry is extremely nascent, and decentralized exchanges lack mature anti-money laundering policies, which could present itself as the next possible targets on the US authorities’ list. Recent scams, including the exit scam rumors that were created due to Chef Nomi’s poor handling of Sushiswap, and the recent UniCats scam could hinder the growth of the DeFi industry if the sector continues to overlook policies. 

Yearn.Finance (YFI) Loses Over 45% in a Week, Further Correction Expected

For the past few weeks, the DeFi market has seen major losses, including Yearn.finance’s YFI token, Uniswap’s UNI token, SushiSwap’s SUSHI token, and Curve’s CRV token. 

Yearn.finance’s YFI token has seen multiple all-time highs this year, first surpassing Bitcoin’s value at the time, surging to over $18,000 in late August, and even reaching $39,600 in early September, 3 times Bitcoin’s value at the time. 

This came at a time where the DeFi market had $8 billion in the total value of cryptocurrencies locked, and according to DeFi Pulse, the DeFi market is currently at over $10 billion. Yearn.finance currently has over $600 million in total value locked. 

Two recent events that have led to Yearn.finance’s dips

Yearn.finance has recently witnessed two events that have taken the Ethereum-based token down even further. Two weeks ago, Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance deployed a series of new contracts relating to a game called Eminence Finance, which, unfortunately, experienced a bug. 

YFI token holders quickly deployed capital into the Eminence contracts, believing that they would be able to make a swift profit as soon as the project launches. Eminence Finance has no website and has not officially launched at the time. 

The unfortunate bug on the deployed contracts led to a loss of $15 million worth of DAI, while the fraudulent user put in much less. Soon after the hack was announced, many YFI holders sold their tokens, leading to a 6 percent drop within 24 hours.Yearn.finance’s YFI token continued to plunge due to a high sell-off pressure, as the users of the Yearn.finance’s vault returns have faced a steep drop. Yearn.finance’s yETH vault, its core product was launched in early September. The yETH vault enables the process of seeking the best returns for yield farmers, pooling funds to reduce Ethereum gas fees.

YFI to continually drop

A crypto analyst pointed out that YFI’s next support level to look out for is at $10,000. If the Ethereum-based token breaks beyond this level, Yearn.finance could be valued lower than Bitcoin’s current price, plunging towards $6,000. The analyst said, “Not a good look for $YFI. Target at least $10k range, but horizontal support down there is at $6k.”

Another trader recently tweeted, predicting that YFI would soon drop to $12,000. YFI is currently trading at $12,958. He emphasized that while YFI fell beyond $14,000, it was an important support level hinting further decline to YFI’s price. 

Ethereum’s DeFi Trades Skyrocketed in Q3 2020, but Bitcoin Volume Declined

A quarterly report from eToro multi-cryptoasset trading platform indicated that while the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector was bullish in 2020’s third quarter (Q3), Bitcoin trades decreased in contrast.

DeFi outperforms Bitcoin

The popular crypto trading platform eToro published a quarterly report recently, where it assessed popular altcoins running on the Ethereum blockchain, such as TRON, EOSIO (EOS), Binance Coin (BNB), and Tezos (XTZ). It found that while these ERC-20 tokens underwent double- and triple-digit gains in terms of trading volume, Bitcoin trades declined in the third quarter of this year.

eToro assessed investor behavior on its platform and found that worldwide, TRON, EOS, and NEO were the most preferred cryptoassets traded by investors. Across all the cryptocurrencies it assessed, eToro found that only one digital asset experienced a quarter-on-quarter decline for trading volume, and that was Bitcoin (BTC). 

In explaining why there was a decline in Bitcoin’s trading volume, eToro market analysts attributed the observed 38% drop in popularity of BTC to the explosive growth and craze of DeFi. It indicated that investors seemed to prefer leveraging DeFi tokens for swapping and trades. The report read:

“DeFi, yield farming, NFT’s, and altcoin rallies were the commanding narratives in Q3, even though MicroStrategy’s $425M investment in Bitcoin was certainly a highlight.”

The report added that the DeFi craze was here to stay.

What drives the price of crypto assets?

When explaining what influenced the prices of crypto assets on the market, analysts said that numerous factors could account for a surge in price.

“Listing and partnership announcements” were among the factors that had “immediate, large, positive influences on price,” according to eToro. However, the hype of a listing typically wears off within a week. Of the sorts of listings, the adoption of a crypto asset by a large coin exchange was said to have the “largest potential impact on the price of a digital asset,” as that listing made the given digital currency available to a larger scale of potential investors. As they gain more exposure, more adoption of the crypto asset may be foreseen for the future. The opposite was not true. The report read:

“When a cryptoasset previously offered on larger exchanges gets listed on a smaller trading venue, there is no major noticeable impact on price in the short run.”

In contrast, “funding, mergers and acquisitions” announcements were the top factors named for influencing a price increase for a significant amount of time. In reference to this, eToro said, “Positive effects often extend beyond a week.” An example of a popular adoption that was given included Microstrategy’s $425 million investment in Bitcoin.

Other factors that were named and that drove up the price significantly and for a considerable amount of time were halvings, employment changes, partnership, staking.

Source: eToro

DeFi keeps growing, it is here to stay

The report assessed DeFi’s growth in comparison with the initial coin offering (ICO) craze of 2017. It said that while Defi’s hype has not yet reached the 2017 ICO level, where 16 million Ether (ETH) was locked up in smart contracts, it was well on its way to achieving even more substantial growth. eToro’s report read:

“The amount of ETH locked in DeFi applications in January 2020 was 3 million and has nearly tripled (8.4 million) since, with a peak of 8.9 million on September 15th.”

DeFi’s growth is only escalating from here on forward, with Yearn.finance (YFI) token undergoing astronomical returns of more than 2,000%. Assessing the top 20 DeFi tokens, eToro said that in Q3, the median decentralized finance asset was up more than 32%.

At the time of writing, the DeFi industry is currently valued at $11.17 billion in total value locked on DeFiPulse, with 2.75% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization being allocated to the decentralized finance sector.

Yearn.finance Proposal to Create ETH 2.0 Validator Vault Could be a Game-Changer for Staking

Ethereum developers have recently announced the launch of ETH 2.0, expected on Dec. 1. Retail investors could soon have the opportunity to earn on ETH 2.0 if a proposal on Ethereum 2.0 validator vault on Yearn.finance passes. 

Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 is expected on Dec. 1, and the ETH community has already begun staking ETH via deposit contracts. The contract requires 524,288 ETH in order to proceed with the launch. If the required amount has not been reached a week before the launch date, the launch will then be delayed to seven days after the threshold has been reached.

So far, 50,273 Ether has been deposited, worth around $22.3 million. In order to attract more ETH stakers, the Yearn governance community has proposed an ETH 2.0 validator vault. 

This vault would enable staking rewards for investors via liquidity provider (LP) tokens. When investors deposit an amount of ETH to these vaults, they would receive the same amount in yBETH in return, Yearn’s beacon Ethereum pool token.

The proposed ETH 2.0 validator vault works in a similar way to a mining pool on the proof-of-work network, where hash rates are pooled together. This process would allow retail investors to deposit ETH in smaller amounts, while still being able to participate in staking.

Ahead of Ethereum’s beacon chain to be launched on Dec. 1, ETH holders have been depositing ETH, and exactly 32 ETH to accumulate the sum needed to reach the limit before Dec. 1. 32 ETH is not a small amount, and this has been a high cost of entry, which could very much limit the number of investors from staking.

Vitalik has contributed around $1.3 million in ETH, and he has contributed via different Ethereum addresses. While ETH has been pouring in for staking, large amounts of ETH has been pulled off of exchanges.

The Yearn ETH 2.0 validator vault could add incentives for retail investors to stake on the network, and could also create secondary markets for Ethereum 2.0, which could also provide liquidity, and lending, which could fuel the DeFi community. These added incentives not only attract retail investors but also other investors that hold large amounts of ETH who are looking to remain liquid while supporting the launch of ETH 2.0

Yearn.finance (YFI) Sees Massive Price Spike, Analyst says a Bubble is not Possible in the New Paradigm

Yearn.finance (YFI) price has been surging in the past week, as the rest of the cryptocurrency market has been witnessing massive bullish momentum as Bitcoin has been leading the market.

The YFI token has seen a 16.8 percent surge in the past 24 hours, and almost a 30 percent climb in the past week. The decentralized finance (DeFi) token has surged from under $20,000, to trading at $23,294 at press time.

YFI managed to climb around $4,000 in less than an hour, which liquidated many short position holders on margin exchanges including Binance. In the past month, YFI’s price has seen high volatility, due to the high futures volume of the DeFi token.

Hsaka, a cryptocurrency trader recently commented on the recent YFI price moves, saying:

“$YFI is now at $23,000. Those of you in the old school who believe this is a bubble simply have not understood the new mathematics, or you did not care enough to try. Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm. So are corrections and all else.”

The trader also believes that DeFi tokens, such as YFI and AAVE have been underexposed by traders in the cryptocurrency market. The trader explained:

“Lot of chatter about an alts carnage. Alts have shat the bed harder on $150 $BTC sneezes. Think it’s mostly a narrative desperately trying to be shoehorned in from those sidelined/ underexposed. My pocket rockets, $YFI and $AAVE are up 3x & 2x since Initial Shill Offering.”

Yearn.finance improvement protocols

Yearn.finance improvement protocols expected could take the YFI token to the next level. Regarding the new few structures, as part of the Yearn improvement protocol (YIP), there would be a removal of a 0.5% withdrawal fee, which rewarded YFI for capital flight. 

As strategists are the key value drivers of Yearn, the improvement protocol suggests that they now earn 50 percent of the strategy rewards rather than 10 percent of the 5 percent performance fee.

Although YFI’s price is currently still far away from $44,000, its all-time high, but the rally in the DeFi market could take the Yearn.finance token higher. The steadily growing amount of total value locked in Yearn’s yVaults and an increase in yields are influencing the YFI rally.

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