The cryptocurrency market has spent most part of the year struggling as the market has been in a downtrend that has sent many cryptocurrencies to fall from regions seen as all-time highs over a year ago, to trade at price points not seen since the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the month of May has been particularly bearish for the cryptocurrency space with major cryptocurrencies falling below major critical support zones, we are seeing the same effect in the United States stock market with the Tech-dominated NASDAQ index posting its 7th consecutive week of decline.
However, we are seeing some price action as Bitcoin is closing in on $32,000 on the back of news of net accumulation by whales and short-term holders. Also, we saw the NASDAQ end its losses, after posting massive gains as many believe a relief rally has been long overdue.
Although the market has been struggling, BEL, the native token of the Bella Protocol has been able to post over 150% gains in the last 7 days. In fact, it hit a high of $1 for the first time since the first week of April, where it fell from a high of $1.27 in that month to trade as low as $0.23 in May, representing an 81.89% decline.
The Bella Protocol
Bella Protocol is a platform that provides a suite of DeFi products designed to make crypto banking simpler and more accessible. The protocol aims to create a better user experience by eliminating the high fee and slow transaction issues that can affect some blockchain platforms like Ethereum while simultaneously improving the user experience through its simplified DeFi smart portal.
Bella’s smart pool feature allows users to access the best yields available in the DeFi market, while benefiting from nearly zero gas fees since these are directly subsidized by the platform. The project launched in September 2020 as the first project distributed via Binance’s Launchpool platform, and has secured investments from several prominent firms, including Arrington XRP Capital and Ledger Capital.
The protocol was built by the ARPA team, a blockchain-based layer 2 solution for privacy-preserving computation. The BEL token is an essential component of the Bella Protocol ecosystem and serves as both a reward token that allows holders to participate in the governance of the platform. BEL can also be used to farm fee rewards from the network, get exclusive discounts on Bella protocol products (such as its robo-advisor tool), and for earning staking rewards.
One of Bella Protocol’s main features is its simplified user experience and wide variety of products. The platform consists of the following main products: the Bella Liquidity Mining platform, flexible savings, a one-click smart portal to deploy assets with zero gas fees on popular and profitable DeFi products, a lending platform, and the Robo-Advisor, which can be used to help with the investment selection process.
What you should know
- On the 29th of May 2022, BEL’s 24-hour trading volume spiked to $555.75 million, up 1,988.45% from the previous day. In fact, the volume recorded was over 1000% of the token’s market capitalization.
- The spike coincided with a sharp rise in value from $0.32 to $1.30 between 28 and 30 May. Without any major announcements and developments for the protocol, specific reasons for the pump were unclear.
- Since account holders on Etherscan remained static, whales (accounts holding more than 1% of BEL) may have contributed to the unexpected gains. One account, for instance, received approximately 594,000 BEL tokens over 24 hours, which were subsequently withdrawn through the Binance exchange.
- Traders should be aware that short-term price gains may not be sustainable and could face a swift reversal as the cryptocurrency market is all too well known for.
- This may be the case because as at today, the token is currently trading $0.80, down 38.46% from the $1.30 peak it traded on the 30th according to Coinmarketcap.
- Before BEL’s recent pump, the token was trading at an all-time low of $0.20 on 5 May. BEL has been in a downtrend as with other cryptocurrencies, for most of 2022, having opened the year at $1.55 before falling to $0.89 on 12 March. The token did see a brief swell in April but proceeded to head below the $0.50 price line on 10 May, following the Terra blockchain fallout that affected the entire market.
To conclude, it is important to note that the Bella Protocol performs quarterly burn programmes using 4% of interest generated from the Flex Savings protocol (typically between $2,000 and $5,000 per burn). The core team retains 20% of interest generated through Flex Savings. Another 4% goes to BEL stakers who use the Bella Locker protocol.