DeFi Frenzy Overtakes Crypto Market Positive price pressure o | Bitcoin Bravado

DeFi Frenzy Overtakes Crypto Market

Positive price pressure on Bitcoin, and the crypto market as a whole, had been building for months since the COVID crash in March 2020.

All that was missing from kicking things over into an actual bull market was a narrative...

Well, it looks like crypto has found one at long last.

Decentralized finance

If you're new to the crypto space, then decentralized finance might feel exotic, strange, even futuristic. As anyone who has been around here long enough can tell you, decentralized finance has always been blockchain's core use case.

Need proof? For starters, Bitcoin is a decentralized financial system revolving around BTC, a peer-to-peer digital currency.

As you scroll down the list at CoinMarketCap or *CoinGecko* (if you're waist-deep in Uniswap tokens), almost anything you see can roughly be considered DeFi.

Cardano, Litecoin, Cosmos, Tezos, Chainlink, Ontology, Synthetix Network, Band, Solana, Matic, Harmony — the list goes on — and there is surely no need to mention Ethereum.

So, while the decentralized finance tag may not point to something new about crypto, it's created an umbrella that groups this whole crazy-digital-coins-thing into a very coherent narrative.

In markets, narratives are just as crucial as technicals. The two find deep correlation in positive and negative market cycles, with strong narratives always overlapping bull markets.

Previously, ICOs were responsible for an exuberant 2016-2017 bull market, and today, it's all about DeFi.

Beyond the hype

Unlike the ICO craze, DeFi is quite grounded in comparison. Many of these projects, like Compound, Maker, and Balancer, are rooted in genuine economics at work, presenting new and exciting ways to organize finances.

When, if ever, have you heard of instant, undercollateralized loans with no credit checks, as you can find on Akropolis? How about floating, high yields across crypto asset deposits, and totally new income streams via something called *yield farming*?

In 2008, Satoshi unleashed the BTC whitepaper in response to the bailout of banks, rather than people, at the start of the Great Recession. Here in 2020, we're on the brink of another global downturn, and people are, again, not being bailed out.

When DeFi protocols like Yam distribute governance tokens with no premine, founder, or VC shares, giving everyone equal access to a community-allocated treasury, you start to feel that crypto is *really* on to something this time around.

Projects to watch

DeFi projects are flying onto Uniswap faster than is possible to keep up with. Far from being another *shitcoin roulette*, many Uniswap prospects have flown straight to the top with listings on Binance, Huobi, and Coinbase.

As with anything in the crypto market, do your own research before swapping precious BTC or ETH. But, there's *gold in them there hills*.

Keep an eye on macro DeFi platforms like Ethereum, Cardano, Tezos, Cosmos, Elrond, Harmony, and Polkadot.

DeFi platforms lean heavily on oracles to bring off-chain assets into the picture for collateral. Watch Chainlink, Band Protocol, Nest Protocol, Dia, and Tellor.

Scaling these applications for the most amount of people? Celer and Matic have you covered.

Finally, what about strict DeFi applications themselves? Compound, Balancer, Maker, Akropolis, Kava, Yearn, and even tiny upstart Yam are worth your time.

There are many more out there, but half the fun is discovering them on your own. Set some time aside and make sure you've got that CoinGecko app locked and loaded.

To gain access to Stacked's Free DeFi Index, click here