The recent explosive growth of decentralized finance has seen the sector lock nearly $4 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in less than five months.
According to DeFi Pulse, the number of Ether locked up in DeFi protocols increased 218.5% since June, growing from 2.7 million ETH to 8.6 million ETH. Locked Bitcoin has grown more than 3,000%, from 5,000 BTC in mid-2020 to roughly 158,800 BTC today.
On Oct. 14, crypto asset exchange and investment platform CoinList set a new record for the largest sum of Bitcoin tokenized by a single entity in one day using the Wrapped Bitcoin protocol. CoinList minted 4,997 WBTC, or $57.1 million worth of Bitcoin, on behalf of its clients for use on the Ethereum network.
The value of Ether locked in DeFi is $3.24 billion, or 7.6% of Ethereum’s total market cap. The total amount of BTC locked is $1.81 billion, or 0.85% of Bitcoin’s market cap.
Despite the huge sums of BTC and ETH recently absorbed by DeFi, locked Bitcoin and Ether currently represents less than half of the total value locked, or TVL, in the sector — together comprising 44.6% of the sector’s $11.33 billion.
DeFi Pulse does not provide data on what share of DeFi’s TVL that other specific crypto assets like SNX, COMP or DAI represent.