Filecoin Surges 25% Overnight While Bitcoin Stagnates

Filecoin Surges 25% Overnight While Bitcoin Stagnates

The native token for Protocol Labs’s peer-to-peer file storing network is surging.

While big name cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum heaped disappointment on their followers this week, Filecoin has bulldozed its way into the top 20 with an overnight price surge of 25%. It now trades at a price of $126.

Filecoin is the native token for Protocol Labs’s new decentralized file-sharing protocol. It’s kind of like a blockchain-based solution to the potential corruptibility of cloud storage giants like Amazon, Microsoft, or Dropbox.

Using the FIL token, members of the network can pay storage miners to ensure their digital files and data are stored safely on the blockchain.

Earlier this month, crypto investment titan Grayscale announced that Filecoin would be one of the latest cryptocurrencies to be made into a Trust. Filecoin will join the ranks of its ever-popular Bitcoin Trust.

Since then, decentralized finance (DeFi) oracle service Chainlink announced that Filecoin will now be integratable with smart contract-enabled blockchains like Ethereum.

Elon Musk’s influence on the price of Bitcoin is fading. On Wednesday the Tesla CEO tweeted that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as payment for its electric cars. The news added $100 billion to Bitcoin’s market capitalization, but unlike the news earlier this year of Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase, the Elon effect was shorter lived this time.

Still, yesterday’s news that there are now seven high-profile applications with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds indicates that institutional interest in the currency is still at an all-time high.