Cardano ($ADA) has moved up over 8.6% over the last 24-hour making it the top-performing altcoins in said period, at a time in which the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency space is once again near the $2 trillion mark.

According to CryptoCompare data, ADA is outperforming most other top cryptoassets, with Bitcoin ($BTC) being up 4% in the last 24 hours and Ethereum ($ETH) being up 2.6%. Binance’s $BNB has seen performance similar to ETH, while the $XRP token is up 3.7% in said period.

Top Performing Cryptos Chart via CryptoCompare

Data also shows that Avalanche ($AVAX) is actually down 2% over the same period, while Terra ($LUNA) has dropped by nearly 3%. Top-performing cryptoassets with smaller market capitalizations include Solana ($SOL) which is up 3.6% and TRON ($TRX), up 2.74%.

As for meme-inspired cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has seen its value rise nearly 2%, while Dogecoin ($DOGE) moved up 3.3%. Most cryptocurrencies are up at a time in which BTC has been unable to break through the $44,500 mark for several weeks amid an ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine and an increasingly hawkish stance from central banks in the West, including the Federal Reserve.

The rise of these assets has seen the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies near the $2 trillion mark, a level that was last seen before global markets slumped after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Crypto Market Cap Chart via TradingView

Their rise also comes shortly after American multinational investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs became the first major U.S. bank to conduct an over-the-counter crypto trade. The firm traded a non-deliverable Bitcoin option, a derivative tied to Bitcoin’s price that pays out in cash.

 Cardano’s performance may be related to its booming decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, which has recently topped the $400 million mark when it comes to total value locked.

As CryptoGlobe reported Minswap, an “automated market-maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) on Cardano which supports multiple pricing functions for a single liquidity pool” has recently become its top DeFi project, followed by SundaeSwap, a decentralized exchange backed by cFund, Alameda Research, and Double Peak Group.

A widely-followed Cardano whale has recently suggested that the total value locked on the cryptocurrency’s network “is going into the billions soon” as more projects are launched on top of it, with alternatives to decentralized money markets such as Compound and Aave being “lined up.”

 According to Binance Academy, Total Value Locked (TVL) for a DeFi protocol is the aggregate amount of funds locked into that protocol. For instance, “the TVL locked in Ethereum projects is typically measured in ETH or USD.”

DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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