Synthetix DeFies odds, surges 30% despite Ethereum drop from year-to-date highs

For most of the past 48 hours, the crypto market was blood red. Bitcoin had dipped from $24,300, its weekend highs, to $21,800 at the local lows, as Ethereum slipped under $600 for the first time in many weeks.

This move resulted in a strong move lower in many smaller-cap altcoins, which fell against the dollar by around double the amount BTC did.

Even decentralized finance (DeFi) coins, which are seen to be quite resilient sometimes, saw a strong move lower.

But DeFing the odds, Synthetix Network Token (SNX) has gained 30 percent in the past 24 hours alone. It is the top-performing cryptocurrency in the top 100 by market capitalization, outpacing Bitcoin’s three percent gain by an order of magnitude. The crypto asset’s price action can be seen in the chart seen below.

Synthetix surges 30% in a single day, shocking investors

This massive rally in SNX’s price action can be attributed to a vast number of trends, some of which are as follows:

• Coinbase Pro recently listed SNX after months and even years of anticipation, giving investors that don’t know how to use Uniswap or don’t have access to other exchanges to trade the coin. Unit bias, which is when investors prefer coins that are lower in price, may have added to the buying pressure seen on Coinbase Pro and other retail-focused platforms.
• SNX volumes have shot through the roof over recent days as investors have begun to wake up to the cryptocurrency’s potential. SNX has largely been a coin that has underperformed in the DeFi space.
• “Smart money” addresses as defined by Nansen, an Ethereum-focused data firm, have been accumulating the coin over the past week.
• Synthetix’s developers have been rolling out a number of new improvements. First and foremost, a new staking decentralized application was rolled out yesterday, improving the user experience. Secondly, Synthetix’s “Shaula” release is being rolled out, which will “allow ETH and generic ERC20 collateral to be added to Synthetix.” Many see this crucial to Synthetix’s development as it seeks to move beyond the SNX-only model that has existed for so long.

About 20 hours from now, we’re kicking off the Shaula release. During this time, expected to take up to several hours, SNX and Synth tokens will not be transferrable or exchangeable on-chain. 1/https://t.co/UpZn6rT5E7

— Synthetix ⚔️ (@synthetix_io) December 22, 2020

Coinbase volatility

The buying pressure was so strong today that a large premium developed between the price of SNX on Coinbase and the price of the Ethereum-based DeFi coin on other exchanges.

It reached a point where SNX traded 40% higher on Coinbase than it did on Binance.

Such diversions in price action, especially on liquid and leading exchanges like Coinbase, may show that there is a vast amount of retail support.

And it’s not like there is no liquidity or volume on Coinbase Pro. In fact, the SNX/USD pair is the most-traded SNX pair in existence and has one of the thickest order books.

This goes to show how much demand there was for the DeFi coin today, even though the arbitrage was closed out within 20 minutes.

$SNX trading 40% higher on Coinbase than Binance lmao pic.twitter.com/X6vt9I3xTA

— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) December 22, 2020