Aave ascends; Bitcoin keeps booming

Bitcoin and Ethereum prices continued to move higher as the fraught first week of November climactically concluded. Stocks are rallying around the world on vaccine hopes. And the decentralized finance industry is reclaiming its mojo.

Flash loan innovator Aave is up 80% over the past week. The move came amidst reports of DeFi's demise in October. Aave is an open source and non-custodial protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets, sans collateral. This past summer, Aave ushered in a 2.0 era, swapping its native LEND token for a new governance token, AAVE.

Among the largest 50 cryptos, AAVE last week outperformed all of them (BlockchainNews). It’s up 17% in the past 24 hours, hitting $57 at about 8 a.m. Monday (EST).

BTC was $15,700, up 3%. With BTC’s giant leap of late, traders appeared to have moved on from DeFi mania. Now suddenly all of crypto’s pistons are firing. With a few exceptions.

Ripple not making a splash at a time when digital assets are a geyser has many in the XRP community wondering whether widespread adoption of it for settling cross-border transactions is ever going to happen. XRP is flat on the fortnight and down 9% over the past 12 months.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz last week candidly tweeted out a trio of hellish hurdles confronting XRP: “Regulatory uncertainty, last mile problems, fear of reprisals from existing partners."

U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden hasn't really signaled much of a stance on digital money but could soon start to do so as his team floats names for regulatory roles. As Blockchain News has pointed out, there are rumors that Biden has shortlisted Gary Gensler as a candidate to possibly head the SEC. Gensler, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is seen as open-minded towards crypto.

The next 70-plus days will be filled with drama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But you can bet it'll be business as usual at the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The Fed is of course expected to create more new dollars to prop up a Covid-19-weakened economy. As macro catalysts go, inexorable money-printing is money in the bank and flambéed into the equation for gold and crypto, at least for the foreseeable future, many analysts say.

The adoption of crypto by red states, unfettered by federal oversight, as epitomized by Wyoming’s move to allow digital currency banking, remains a tantalizing scenario that could still play out in years to come, although President-Elect Biden is expected to be friendlier to the adoption of blockchain. This could provide an advantage for established banks and fintechs already immersed in securities and consumer finance regulations and with the resources to operate under greater scrutiny. Fears of heavier-handed federal oversight should be alleviated by the likelihood that the Republicans will keep control of the U.S. Senate, increasing the prospect of gridlock.