Total Value Locked in DeFi Sector Hits Record $13.6B

The U.S. dollar value of the cryptocurrency liquidity locked up in all decentralized finance (DeFi) projects has hit another record.

• At around 08:00 UTC on Thursday, the total value locked (TVL), as provided by analytics website DeFi Pulse, reached a new lifetime high of $13.62 billion.

• Harvest Finance, the decentralized platform that lets users automatically “farm” assets from other DeFi platforms, is helping the charge with its TVL almost doubling over 24 hours.
• The 84% boost to Harvest's TVL, in U.S. dollar terms, saw it jump from $473.5 million to over $890 million, just shy of its record TVL at $1.09 billion seen on Oct. 23. It currently ranks sixth among other DeFi projects.
• Lesser-known projects, DFI Money and ForTube also saw big hikes in locked liquidity, with 24-hour gains of over 45% and 36%, respectively.
• "People have been fascinated by high-yield, risk-free strategies," said Ki Young Ju, CEO at analytics firm CryptoQuant. "For conservative investors, staking on DeFi projects is a better strategy than holding or utilizing other risk-free strategies like arbitrage on exchanges."
• The DeFi sector has been on a tear this year, after hitting $1 billion TVL in February, the sector currently holds 13 times greater value.
• The last all-time high of around $12.5 billion was hit in late October, preceding a temporary $1 billion slump before rising sharply again to Thursday's record.

See also: Flash Loans Aren’t the Problem, Centralized Price Oracles Are