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Yearn Finance risks pullback after YFI price gains 100% in less than 3 weeks

The recent bout of buying in the Yearn Finance market accompanies meager volumes, suggesting there are not enough buyers backing YFI's price rally.

Yearn Finance (YFI) looks poised for a price correction after rising five days in a row to approach $42,000. Notably, an absence of enough buying volume coupled with overbought risks is behind the bearish outlook.

The YFI price rally so far

YFI price surged by a little over 47% in five days to $41,970 as traders rotated capital out of "top-cap" cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) and looked for short-term opportunities in the altcoin market.

Yearn Finance was among the beneficiaries of the so-called capital migration, given its value against BTC and ETH rose almost 47% and 41.50% in just five days. Meanwhile, at the core of traders' sudden buying interest in the YFI markets was a token buyback program.

YFI/ETH and YFI/BTC daily price performance after token buyback program announcement. Source: TradingView

On Dec. 16, the Yearn Finance team announced that they had purchased more than $7.5 million worth of YFI tokens from the open market at an average price of $26,651 per unit. They also revealed $45 million extra cash in their Treasury that they would use to continue their YFI buyback spree.

Additionally, the Yearn Finance community also proposed that the YFI treasury direct a portion of the token buyback to reward YFI holders who actively participate in Yearn Governance. The proposal (full details here) is currently in its voting phase.

YFI price surged by more than 100% against the U.S. dollar after the token buyback announcement.

YFI price correction risks

However, YFI trading volume fell despite the rall, suggesting the low conviction among traders in its upward movement.

YFI/USD daily price chart featuring price-volume divergence. Source: TradingView

Typically, a bearish divergence between price and volume leads to either correction or consolidation till conviction increases. As a result, the likelihood of YFI at least pausing its ongoing price rally is high, with its daily relative strength index (RSI) also entering its overbought zone above 70, a sell signal.

Related: YFI price gains 46% in just four days after Yearn Finance's $7.5M buyback

Additionally, the Yearn Finance token's latest price rally has brought it closer to a known inflection zone near $40,000, as shown via the Fibonacci retracement graph in the chart below.

YFI/USD three-day price chart featuring Fib entry and exit levels. Source: TradingView

In detail, the 0.618 Fib line near $40,113 has been limiting YFI's upside attempts intraday. The same level was instrumental in stopping the Yearn Finance token's price rally between October and November, which later led the YFI price to its 12-month low near $17,000.

Nonetheless, if the bulls manage to push the YFI price above the 0.618 line decisively, they may also take the token out of its multi-month range defined by circa $25,500 as support and $40,000 as resistance. In that scenario, YFI's next upside target may move towards the 0.5 Fib line around $51,000.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Yearn Finance price nearly hits $70,000 — What’s driving the YFI bulls?

Traders have flocked into the Yearn Finance's YFI markets as their upside opportunities in other top tokens subside.

A lackluster cryptocurrency market did little in offsetting Yearn Finance's bullish bias as the price of its governance token YFI reached new record highs in USD terms on May 11 — just shy of $70,000.

YFI price hits new highs in USD

The YFI/USD exchange rate added $6,258, or 10.02%, to reach $68,748 ahead of the London opening bell. The pair quickly retraced lower as traders decided to realize their profits, hitting roughly $67,067 as of 0736 UTC. Nevertheless, the drop appeared marginal compared to the prevailing uptrend, hinting that YFI could continue its upward momentum following a short-term consolidation period.

The token performed equally well against Bitcoin (BTC), the flagship cryptocurrency whose own uptrend slowed down after hitting a milestone high of roughly $65,000 last month. Tuesday morning, the YFI/BTC exchange rate was near its five-month high of 1.192 BTC. Meanwhile, at its intraday peak, the pair's bid was 1.247 BTC, up 58%.

YFI/BTC reaches 5-month high. Source: Tradingview

The massive upside moves in the Yearn Finance token market appeared as its top rivals underperformed severely. At first, Bitcoin continued to show weakness after failing to log a breakout above a psychological resistance level of $60,000. Its strong positive correlation with other top digital assets also pushed their prices lower.

For instance, Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, plunged back below $4,000 on profit-taking sentiment.

Meanwhile, the biggest losers on a 24-hour adjusted timeframe were Dogecoin (DOGE), XRP, Polkadot (DOT), and Litecoin (LTC). Each fell within the range of 9%-12%, again due to traders' inclination to withdraw profits after the tokens' supersonic price rallies in the previous sessions.

Yearn Finance's YFI was comparatively weaker so far in 2021. The token would surge by almost 160% compared to its altcoin peers' thousands of percentages worth of upside gains. For instance, Dogecoin remained a scene-stealer for most of the first and second quarters, rising by more than 19,000% to eventually outshine other large-cap altcoins.

Technically, YFI served as a hedge as the rest of the cryptocurrency market returned from their overbought levels. But looking closely, what worked in the favor for the Yearn Finance token — at least in the current quarter — is its ability to cast aside a flurry of its major issues.

Banking infrastructure for DeFi

In retrospect, Yearn had a rocky beginning in 2021. Its main problem heading into the year was funding deficits. The Yearn Finance group had no reserves set aside for its core contributors that limited it from gaining any upside exposure. Andre Cronje, the creator of the Yearn Finance protocol, even shared his frustration by writing a blog titled, “Building in DeFi Sucks”.

However, the following weeks witnessed huge community involvement to solve the reserves issue. The YFI holders introduced two proposals and passed them through a democratic vote. The first “Buyback and Build” upgrade assisted in introducing a buyback program that added YFI to their treasury for redistribution.

Meanwhile, the second “Funding Yearn's Future” proposal minted 6,666 new YFI tokens to create the protocol treasury, with a primary focus on funding core contributors.

The next major upgrade came in the form of Yearn V2.  Its mid-January launch earlier met with negative reviews due to user interface issues. But the team responded promptly to address those concerns to a successful conclusion. In the months following the fix, the total value locked inside the Yearn Finance pool has climbed to $4.243 billion.

Source: Yearn.Science

The most notable changes Yearn V2 brought to the Yearn Finance protocol included a new fee structure, multi-strategy vaults, and highly differentiated strategies with the help of a new ecosystem partnership with Cream. YFI prices responded bullishly to the events.

Frax Finance,  a fractional-algorithmic stablecoin protocol, has added its fixed yield asset FXB to Yearn vaults. Meanwhile, Alchemix is also building a credit system atop their protocol, confirming that Yearn is becoming a banking alternative to the decentralized finance ecosystem.

The YFI rally takes its long-term bullish cues from the said growth prospects.

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Is DeFi yield appetite rising again? Enso raises $5M as YFI hits new highs

Enso raises $5 million from top funds and YFI price hits a new record high as the demand for DeFi yield rises.

The appetite for DeFi is rising again as blue chips are rallying and yield-earning strategy-sharing platforms, like Enso, are on the rise.

Enso, a platform where users can share yield-earning strategies, raised $5 million on April 13 from top U.S. venture capital firms including Polychain Capital and Multicoin Capital.

Synthetix (SNX) founder Kain Warwick, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Dfinity COO Artia Moghbel, and other prominent angels took part in the round.

The high-profile fundraising round comes as Yearn.finance (YFI) achieved a new all-time high above $50,000.

Why is the demand for yield-earning protocols rising?

Protocols like YFI are seeing significant demand once again as DeFi blue chips start to rally off of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) hitting record highs.

The appetite for high-risk and high-return plays is clearly increasing, as the cryptocurrency market as a whole enters price discovery.

YFI tops yield TVL rankings. Source: Defillama.com

The term price discovery refers to a technical trend when the price of an asset or the valuation of a market hits a new all-time high.

From late February to mid-March, the total value locked (TVL) of DeFi asset management protocols dropped off quite significantly from $4.3 billion to $2.7 billion.

However, since late March, the DeFi asset management sector began to see renewed momentum, driving demand to protocols like YFI where users can earn yield on their assets.

YFI/USDT 1-day price chart. Source: TradingView.com

Naturally, the resurgence of asset management and yield-earning strategies in DeFi led to a spike in venture capital interest.

Enso, for example, recently raised $5 million from a round led by leading venture capital firms like Polychain Capital Multicoin Capital, whose assets under management (AUM) exceed a billion dollars.

Enso allows users to access alpha yield farms, batch yield farms, batch AMM purchase, flash swaps, collateralization, and restructuring, which allows users to maximize how they earn yield across various protocols.

Spencer Applebaum, an associate at Multicoin Capital, which was praised by top fund managers like Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu for being one of the top performing funds in recent months, particularly emphasized how Enso allows users to easily tap into various DeFi yield-earning strategies.

Applebaum said:

“We’re extremely excited to back Connor, Gorazd, and the rest of the Enso team as they work to open up DeFi asset management by removing whitelists and curation, and enabling composability with all DeFi networks. Enso is fully customizable and enables anyone to become a fund manager with the click of a button.” Spencer Applebaum, associate at Multicoin capital.

The rising interest towards yield-generating protocols, like YFI, and yield strategy-sharing platforms, such as Enso, indicate that there is a large demand for yield in the current market landscape.

Has DeFi summer arrived?

Whether the growing demand for yield-earning platforms and protocols would mark the beginning of the "DeFi summer" remains to be seen.

Atop the strong technical momentum major DeFi tokens have seen, the general sentiment around DeFi has been overwhelmingly positive as of late.

Citibank released a paper on April 16 entitled "Future of Money" and in it, described the benefit of DeFi to other fund managers. 

The recognition of the momentum and the necessity of DeFi by traditional financial institutions could be the catalyst to enable the second wave of capital inflow into the DeFi market in the next few months.

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