APT, the native currency of Layer-1 blockchain Aptos, hit a fresh all-time high of $14.50 yesterday, surging over 300% in the last few days, according to Coinmarketcap data.
Dubbed the “Solana Killer,” Aptos launched to a lot of criticism on Oct. 18 after four years of development by the team behind Facebook’s failed Diem project. However, it has now comfortably outperformed other altcoins in the market.
In the broader crypto market rally where Bitcoin and Ethereum, the top two cryptocurrencies, are up over 30%, APT has been the best-performing crypto. APT’s price appreciated around 70% in the last seven days, while BTC and ETH rose by 10% and 6%, respectively.
Binance Announcement
The main reason for the spike was an announcement made by Binance, the largest crypto exchange in terms of volumes, on Jan. 20. According to the notice, Binance has expanded its liquidity pools to add four new pools, of which two belong to Aptos, APT/BTC, and APT/USD.
Post the announcement, the two new APT-linked pools saw a significant uptick in trade activity.
Increasing Awareness
Aptos is among the few blockchains whose user activity has been rising. According to data on the official website, in the last 30 days, user transactions have increased by over 100%. Daily active accounts have risen from 19,443 on Dec. 24 to 35,742 on Jan. 21.
Similarly, the total value locked (TVL) on Aptos has jumped by over 30% since Dec. and currently sits at around $55 million, according to DeFiLlama data.
However, the number of contract deployers and contracts deployed on the blockchain have remained somewhat stable in the last 30 days.
Also, the fact that 80% of APT’s total supply of 1.01 billion tokens is currently staked is a worrying sign, as it could put pressure on the price in the future.
