CORRECTION (Aug. 20, 13:18 UTC): Adds context at the top of the story to make it clear it’s the price of a single YFI that’s more expensive than a single BTC and that the overall market value of bitcoin continues to be vastly greater. Also notes other tokens are priced above bitcoin, but YFI is the only one with notable trading volume.
Though the total market value of yEarn.finance’s governance token (YFI) is still little more than a rounding error compared with sector behemoth bitcoin’s (BTC), the explosive growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) along with the recent fallback in BTC have propelled the price of a single YFI past that of its much bigger crypto sibling.
- yEarn.finance's governance token (YFI) has surged 35% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at nearly $13,500, according to CoinGecko data.
- In comparison, after hitting a yearly-high earlier this week, bitcoin has now fallen back down to just under $11,800 – possibly in response to a strengthening dollar.
- Bitcoin's exchange rate is also superseded by other obscure tokens, according to comprehensive pricing data from CoinGecko, but YFI represents the only token priced above BTC with any sort of notable 24-hour trading volume with roughly $107 million at last check.
- YFI only launched four weeks ago – initially trading at just $32; it surged $400 as CoinDesk went to press.
- Investors deposit select digital assets into YFI, which then automatically executes various DeFi trading strategies with ROIs of up to 95% – the platform takes 5% of the yield as commission.
- Total value locked (TVL) in yEarn stood at $9.3 million on July 18 but boomed to $600 million by Tuesday. At press time, TVL stood at $675 million, according to DeFi Pulse.
- As a governance token, YFI can be staked to give holders a vote on the protocol's direction. It can also be farmed like many other DeFi tokens.
- But only 30,000 YFIs were created, meaning that despite the price surge its market cap currently sits at just under $400 million – a fraction of BTC's $218 billion.
See also: $200M Staked in YAM-Inspired DeFi Protocol in Under 12 Hours