The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has reached a significant milestone as the Total Value Locked (TVL) in protocols surpassed $100 billion.
The surge in capital locked in on-chain projects can be largely attributed to renewed enthusiasm for Bitcoin, facilitated by the success of Bitcoin ETFs listed on the US market in January.
According to DefiLlama, a major source of DeFi statistical data, the aggregated TVL across DeFi protocols has reached $100.1 billion, with trading volume exceeding $10 billion in 24 hours.
While these figures are lower than the previous record of $189 billion reached in November 2021, they represent a significant achievement for the DeFi ecosystem.
Leading the success of DeFi is the increasing activity of staking platforms in terms of TVL. Among these, the top performer is the Lido liquid staking protocol, with $38.7 billion locked on-chain. Following closely are the EigenLayer staking ecosystem and the Aave protocol, each with over $11 billion locked.
The surge in DeFi TVL beyond the $100 billion threshold marks a key event as it returns for the first time in almost two years. This growth can be attributed to the positive sentiment that has pervaded the crypto markets after the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs.
Institutional demand for Bitcoin ETFs has been instrumental in driving the price of the crypto king to new all-time highs, surpassing $70,000 on March 8th. Recent data from BitMEX analyzed the reaction of Bitcoin ETF-linked stocks: at the time of BTC's ATH, they reached a record value of $28 billion.
It's worth noting that this analysis excluded Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust stocks, which in January was converted from an over-the-counter (OTC) product to an ETF and has since seen a continuous outflow of investors.
Over-the-counter (OTC) trading platforms appear to be facing a shortage of Bitcoin and are resorting to public exchanges to fulfill client orders. OTC desks typically cater to the needs of traders dealing with large volumes of capital, including institutional investors.
As a result, several centralized crypto exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bybit, experienced interruptions following the increase in trading volume when Bitcoin surpassed $60,000.
To handle the surge in demand, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek revealed that the exchange has hired an additional 480 customer support staff.
The surge in Bitcoin prices has also triggered a spike in meme coin prices. Meme coins like Korra (KORRA) saw an incredible pump of 577% in seven days, followed by Ribbit (RIBBIT) with a 235% increase and PUG AI (PUGAI) with a 232% increase.
In particular, tokens known as Shiba Inu and Pepe recorded gains of 168% and 165%, respectively. Now, the market capitalization of meme coins amounts to $61 billion.
Furthermore, the positive trend of meme coins has propelled Dogecoin and SHIB higher in the market capitalization rankings, with $26 billion and $20 billion, respectively.