Bitwise added AAVE and UNI to the Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index (BITX) that tracks the total return of the 10 largest crypto-assets, as measured and weighted by free-float market capitalization.
These assets were added as part of Bitwise’s January month-end rebalance, in response to the growing demand for decentralized services.
Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stated,
“The last few weeks has seen de-platforming & censorship by some of our country’s leading companies. In response, new decentralized services—with no corporation, executives, or board—are growing in popularity.”
DeFi assets like UNI and AAVE entering institutional basket offerings like Bitwise potentially means a new wave of inflows into the space.
With over $26 million in TVL, DeFi assets have been on the rise led by AAVE and UNI.
UNI reached an all-time high of $15.69 earlier today and has surged in price by over 75% in the past 7 days. This performance may be partly due to the number of whales holding over 100k UNI rising over 16% in the past three weeks to an all-time high of 237.
Source: Santiment
AAVE too reached an all-time high of $307 earlier, returning over 250% in the past month alone. This boost in price comes after the surge in demand for the protocol’s flash loans. In the past few months, the amount borrowed through AAVE’s flash loans reached over $1.2 billion.
It was also recently revealed that billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban has over $130,000 worth of staked AAVE in his DeFi portfolio.
In fact, the price surge in these tokens over the past week outperformed the market-leading cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH. This suggests a maturing crypto market, as these large-cap DeFi tokens move independently from the most dominant cryptocurrencies.
