Market Wrap: Bitcoin Trudges Past $11.7K as DeFi Lending Rates Gyrate

Bitcoin gained Wednesday while DeFi interest rate volatility is causing concern over its long-term viability.

Bitcoin trading around $11,670 as of 20:00 UTC. Gaining 4% over the previous 24 hours.

Traders are mostly buying bitcoin Wednesday, with the world's oldest cryptocurrency going as high as $11,735 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase.

Thomas noted bitcoin spot volumes have been rising this past week after a month of relative feebleness.

While gold has rallied 14% over the past month, bitcoin has done twice as well, up 28% during that same period.

Bitcoin bugs continue to believe its price can keep making outsized gains in unsettled economic times.

"I'm bullish on bitcoin," said George Clayton, managing partner of Cryptanalysis Capital.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether, was up Wednesday, trading around $399 after climbing 3% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC.Interest rates in Ethereum-powered decentralized finance, or DeFi, have see-sawed wildly over the past few months.

A metric calculated by DeFi Pulse, determines how much profit an investor would return lending out crypto.

Compound dominates the DeFi lending market and had 3% rates for lenders as of Wednesday.