BeInCrypto Weekly News Roundup: January 8, 2021

This week in crypto news involves mostly Bitcoin and Ether, the number one and two largest cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin continues to break all-time highs and ethereum is inching closer to its own record, up over 60% on the week.
The total crypto market capitalization surpassed $1 trillion for the first time.

Another week in crypto and another massive week in gains for bitcoin, ethereum, and a variety of altcoins.

Even XRP, whose creators have been charged for the sale of unregistered securities, is up over 60% this week.

Bitcoin Continues to Break All-Time Highs

The price of bitcoin hasn’t really slowed down since it breached the $20,000 price barrier. Since overcoming its previous all-time high, bitcoin has been on a tear, closing in on $45,000.

The world’s first and most valuable cryptocurrency has increased by almost 25% this week and almost 4% on the day, an extremely volatile amount not seen in other ‘stable’ assets of its size.

Decentralized Finance Applications Eclipse $20 billion in Total Value Locked

This has also been a big week for Ethereum-based applications, as Decentralized Finance (DeFi) breaks the $20 billion mark in Total Value Locked (TVL).

At the beginning of 2020, there was less than $1 billion in TVL in DeFi. A large portion of this increase may be credited to the increase in the ether price, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network.

Since much of the value staked on DeFi apps is in ether, as the dollar value of Ethereum increases, so does the dollar value of the TVL in the assets on the network.

Ether has witnessed momentous gains this week, closing in on an all-time high around $1,500. It’s up almost 30% on the week but has fallen somewhat over the last 24 hours.

The Crypto Market Passes $1 Trillion In Total Market Cap for First Time

Due in part to the large price increases from bitcoin and ether, the number one and number two largest cryptocurrencies, the total market cap has passed $1 trillion in value for the first time in history.

This notable milestone has been largely driven by institutional investors, significantly more than any other time in Bitcoin’s history.

Firms like Three Arrows Capital and Microstrategy have both bought over $1 billion in bitcoin, and numerous other companies are gobbling up the cryptocurrency in the range of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is also evident by the massive growth in transaction volume, with cryptocurrencies like Tether transacting over $100 billion per day, followed closely by Bitcoin and Ethereum.