Maker’s governance and utility token MKR rallied to levels not witnessed since early 2018
MKR is the digital token for the global financial system MakerDAO and Maker’s lending platform. MKR prices have steadily risen over the last two days hitting a high of $1165.11 yesterday (according to CoinGecko). This price figure is about $103 shy of its all-time high of $1,798.70 set in January 2018. Its market cap has risen to nearly $600 million.
MKR/USD price chart. Source: CoinGecko
The token’s price briefly dipped to $1010 today but has since managed to recover. It is currently trading at 1,122.57 and is up by 40.3% in the last 24 hours. The Ethereum-based governance token has now gained 20.8% over the last seven days. Liberman of Delphi Digital floated an explanation for the rally saying it was due to the growing supply of MakerDAO’s stablecoin Dai.
Several crypto analysts also believe the price surge was an expected but dallied outcome of the boom witnessed in decentralised finance (DeFi). The DeFi sector has shown resurgence signs over the last few days as it looks to become even more popular.
The sector has maintained an upward momentum since the start of the year with the total value locked in DeFi heading towards $22.5 billion. The majority of DeFi projects in the top 20 list have posted daily gains today except for InstaDApp and Flexa. According to DeFi pulse, the total value locked as of writing is $22.01 billion.
Messari’s leading analyst Ryan Watkins pointed out a variance in the correlation between MKR price action and DeFi growth. During last year’s summer DeFi boom, the price of the token had remained constant. That is not the case this year as the demand for the token has increased. Watkins attributed this change to an improvement in the token’s fundamentals.
Watkins also argued that the upswing in MKR token price could have been spurred by the recent bullish run in the crypto market.
“Recent excitement across the industry provided the recipe for [the token’s price] to finally be recognised”, he explained.