The combined market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies – which currently stands at $365bn – has reached its highest valuation since May 2018.
The current crypto re-bound has been underwritten by a Bitcoin price which is fractionally below $12,000, accounting for the lion’s share of the current rally. However, it is not only Bitcoin which is driving the latest crypto run – in a recent email to its users, Swiss exchange Smart Valor recently reported that “the total value locked in decentralized finance has quintupled since the start of 2020 with a current total value of $3.37 billion.”
And it is this DeFi charge which seems to explain Augur’s own price recovery in recent months with its valuation rising from just under $10 in January to just over $20 at the time of writing.
V2 Release
The Augur team announced the release of Version 2 of its platform in late July, with a series of upgrades which, amongst other things, are designed to offer new functionality that allows for smoother adoption of the platform – which remains the Holy Grail for what is arguably the world’s first truly decentralised predictive markets project.
To facilitate the upgrade, both Coinbase and Binance have announced their intention to make the transition from REP to REPv2 transparent for users in a move that confirms wider credibility within the crypto community for the Augur project. However, whilst the team behind the project have delivered on challenging technical credentials which offer truly disruptive promise for the predictive markets industry, the project continues to face challenges with wider adoption.
All Augur betting markets resolved correctly during its Version One phase despite the lack of any central authority in determining market outcomes, indicating real potential for democratisation and greater wealth distribution within gambling markets.
