UNI Market Cap Rebounds $120M as Rest of Crypto Market Falters
Uniswap’s week-old UNI token is the big winner in Wednesday trading with a rebounding price and a market cap swelling by over $100 million in the past 24 hours.
Data from CoinGecko shows the price of the UNI token has increased by just under 20% from $3.80 to over $4.60 over the same time frame.
That’s led to the coin’s market cap jumping by nearly $120 million, from $460 million to just under $580 million at around 13:00 UTC.
At press time, UNI was the 33rd biggest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $581 million, and individual tokens trading at $4.75.
Mounting concerns over a second possible lockdown in both the U.S. and Europe have, over the past few days, sparked a macro sell-off which has had a knock-on effect on digital assets, with approximately $30 billion shaved off the total market cap since Saturday.
UNI has been no exception. Having hit a record high of $8.40 on Friday, the coin slid across the weekend and into the new week, hitting a low of $3.44 Tuesday morning.
But its rebounding price in the past 24 hours is markedly different from the lackluster movement of other, more established, cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market cap, has stuck around $10,400 to $10,500 since its $500 fall on Monday.
Ether, the second-largest, has climbed just $4 over the same time frame.
The net inflow of bitcoin into exchanges, indicative of holders preparing to sell, has since risen to levels not seen since March 13.
Launched last Wednesday, UNI is designed to power on-chain governance decisions on Uniswap – one of the most popular trading platforms in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.
It’s possible that as a barely week-old DeFi coin, UNI’s price may be shielded from some of the “real world” macro effects that have put other more widely traded digital assets into the deep freeze.
But it could also be that the market is anticipating greater institutional involvement in the DeFi space.
CoinDesk reported Wednesday that crypto money manager Panxora is looking to raise $50 million for a new DeFi hedge fund. CEO Gavin Smith said the firm saw this new branch of crypto as having “great potential.”
Indeed, while there doesn’t appear to be a surge in DeFi coins across the board, the native tokens for both yEarn and Band, two alternative DeFi protocols, have surged 7% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
See also: Uniswap Users Say Uniting Can Strengthen UNI
