The crypto industry is experiencing a surge in demand for Bitcoin, leading to a significant increase in the capital locked on-chain, surpassing $100 billion on March 9th. According to DefiLlama data, the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols reached $100.1 billion, with a daily trading volume of over $10 billion. However, these figures still fall short of the record set in November 2021, which was $189 billion.
The top-ranking protocol in terms of locked capital is the liquid staking protocol Lido, with $38.7 billion locked on-chain. It is followed by the staking ecosystem EigenLayer and the Aave protocol, both with over $11 billion locked.
This is the first time in nearly two years that the DeFi TVL has surpassed the $100 billion mark. The increase can be attributed to the positive sentiment returning to the crypto markets since the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January.
The institutional demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs has driven the cryptocurrency to reach new all-time highs, exceeding $70,000 on March 8th. According to BitMEX Research, assets in Bitcoin ETFs reached $28 billion on the same day. This analysis excludes assets from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, which was converted to an ETF in January.
There have been rumors circulating on social media platforms about OTC trading platforms running out of Bitcoin and resorting to public exchanges to fulfill client orders. OTC desks primarily cater to institutional investors and large-volume traders. Several centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bybit, experienced outages due to the increased trading volume after Bitcoin reached $60,000. In response to the surge in demand, Crypto.com hired 480 additional customer representatives.
Bitcoin’s gains have also had a significant impact on memecoin prices. Memecoin Korra (KORRA) saw a 577% increase in the last seven days, making it the top gainer. Ribbit (RIBBIT) and PUG AI (PUGAI) also experienced significant surges of 235% and 232% respectively. Popular tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) saw gains of 168% and 165% respectively. The market capitalization of memecoins currently stands at $61 billion.
As a result of the memecoin trend, Dogecoin (DOGE) and SHIB have entered the top 10 tokens by market cap, with $26 billion and $20 billion respectively.
In other news, there is a discussion around whether children should be introduced to Bitcoin through educational books.