Curve Finance's decentralised exchange Curve may be just two years old, but it has made some giant strides at a time the crypto industry is in a state of "quo vadis".

The collapse of FTX, the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time, has massively shaken traders' trust in centralised exchanges. A recent report by the Financial Times indicates that traders pulled out a record 91,363 BTC worth $1.5 billion from several notable centralised exchanges in November 2022. According to data from CoinCompare, this is the largest outflow of Bitcoin from exchanges on record.

Every day, new stories come out to add new dimensions to what continues to be an unfolding saga. The saying "not your keys, not your tokens" has come to haunt many who had funds in the bankrupt exchange. The collapse of FTX and several other centralised crypto exchanges have inadvertently opened the door to new opportunities for decentralised exchanges such as Curve Finance. But what does this all mean for you as a crypto investor and for Curve and other decentralised exchanges?

## Curve Finance: A pathway to the new crypto future

Before the FTX saga, there were already problems in the centralised exchange ecosystem. Some of these issues date back to 2014 when the first high-profile crypto exchange hack occurred. Since then, several other hacks of notable crypto exchanges have happened. Others went bust and took down investors' funds with them. Even as customers of Mt.Gox are now getting back their holdings after an eight-year process, many other investors have yet to be as lucky. Clients of collapsed exchanges WEX and QuadrigaCX still don't know what happened to their funds.

The setup of centralised crypto exchanges requires users to leave their cryptos on these exchanges to be able to buy, sell or transact with them. This exposes such tokens to being stolen, hacked, or disappearing outright.

Even more unnerving are details that have emerged from the FTX collapse. One of these is that the unregulated operation was basically being run from a penthouse in the Bahamas by a 10-man team of acquaintances of Sam Bankman-Fried, some of whom were romantically involved. There has yet to emerge any information on these individuals to suggest that they meet the [strict competency requirements](/news/article/sec-crypto-enforcement-warning) that operators in the forex, commodity, and equity markets are guided by to control such a large multi-billion dollar operation.

These problems spurred the next generation of crypto exchanges which captured the decentralisation essence of the blockchain. By keeping their crypto holdings in an external wallet that only required connection to the DEX for a transaction, users could at least be sure they are in control of their funds, sparing them from some of these unfortunate events. This was the environment that birthed the Curve DEX platform.

Curve is a decentralised exchange from the stable of Curve Finance. It features a governance token (CRV) and a crypto economy providing decentralised finance tools access. Curve Finance came on board in 2020, when global financial markets were in a pandemic-induced tailspin, and the crypto market underwent a renaissance after a three-year downturn.

How has Curve been able to ride the latest crypto storm, and should users consider this a safer alternative to centralised crypto exchanges?

## What has been Curve Finance's story since the FTX contagion?

The data on the performance of Curve and other decentralised exchanges shows that the trust of crypto market participants has mainly remained unblemished in the period following the FTX saga. There is every reason to be hopeful about the performance of the CRV token in the months and years ahead.

A 17 November, 2022, report by [Delphi Digital on its Twitter page](https://twitter.com/Delphi_Digital/status/1593031160845799425?s=20&t=SoTm6wx29aKmvqj-r0QUxA) indicated that DEX tokens massively outperformed tokens of centralised exchanges. CEX tokens lost 2.5% in the week under review, while DEX tokens, such as CRV, gained 26%. Crypto research portal Messari indicated that Uniswap and Curve Finance were the two decentralised exchanges expanding their user base.

DappRadar currently ranks Uniswap as the top DEX with a total value locked (TVL) of $4 billion. However, the value of the Uniswap token UNI fell 36% in November following the FTX collapse. It was able to claw back some of these losses, gaining 25% as of the first week of December. In contrast, Messari found that not only did CRV gain 66% after dropping to an initial low of $0.4, but Curve's unique user base grew to an all-time high in November 2022, following an 11% increase over the May 2022 previous all-time high.

In essence, Curve Finance performance in terms of CRV's price appreciation and the number of new users has exceeded that of Uniswap in the period following the collapse of FTX. It is also noteworthy that in September 2022, the total value locked on Curve Finance briefly topped that of Uniswap.

The figures show much potential in investing in the CRV token over the long term and participating in various crypto investment activities on Curve's decentralised exchange.

## What activities are performed on Curve's DEX?

Currently, Curve provides two levels of service:

•	Quick Swap (the service for buying and selling crypto tokens)

•	Liquidity pool (the crypto lending portal).

Decentralised exchanges are, by nature, non-custodial. They do not maintain a centralised wallet to which investors must move funds before they can transact. 

Therefore, users must connect their wallets to use the platform. Compatible wallets include Trezor, Ledger, Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, Torus, and Portis. Base wallet currencies supported include Ethereum, Avalanche, Gnosis, Kava, Celo, Fantom, Polygon, and MoonBeam. Once connected, you can swap CRV, DAI, USDT, USDC, LUSD, ETH, and wBTC for each other and an extensive list of other non-descript tokens.

Curve also features liquidity pools for crypto lending and borrowing and presents traders with the Quick Swap exchange portal, where non-custodial crypto tokens are swapped. Liquidity pools are maintained in various cryptos: Bitcoin, Ether, DAI, USDT, and the US Dollar are all featured currencies. 

## Conclusion

The data points are clear: investors are trooping to Curve. This shows that the future of crypto lies in decentralised exchanges. This segment of the crypto market is still nascent, with room for growth in 2023 and beyond.


image of curve finacne logo on blue background of trading stats

Curve Finance to Leverage FTX Crash? 

Top performing crypto tokens between 21 November and 28 November included Huobi Token (HT), Celo (CELO), Curve DAO (CRV), Dogecoin (DOGE), and ApeCoin (APE).

Numerous events happened during the week. Moni Talks covered topics such as United Kingdom-based [Starling Bank ](/news/article/starling-bank-bans-crypto)cutting its customers' accounts off from centralised cryptocurrency exchanges due to the volatility of the market and crypto wallet [MetaMask](/news/article/metamask-news-collect-ips) making plans to collect user internet protocol (IP) addresses.

In addition, Magic Eden, one of the most patronised non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, announced that it had expanded support for Polygon-based NFTs. Polygon is one of the largest NFT blockchains by all-time sales volume, with approximately [$409 million](https://cryptoslam.io/), as of 28 November.

So, let’s take a look at last week’s top performing crypto. 

## Analysis of top performing crypto last week

•	[Huobi Token (HT) ](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/huobi-token/historical-data/)increased by more than 60%. HT is the novel token of the Huobi crypto exchange. Much of the token's value spike occurred due to the rebranding of the pioneer cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global into just Huobi during the week. As part of the rebranding process, Huobi, as a major crypto trading platform, is projected to become one of the top three exchanges across the sector. 

The rebranding led to an increment in trading volume from the smallest value of $14.77 million to the highest value of $27.46 million within the week. The token opened the week strongly at $4.32 on 21 November and reached a weekly low of $4.24 on the same day. HT spiked in price to a weekly high of $7.32 and was trading for $7.12 in the late hours of 27 November. There was a 64% increase in HT price during the last full week of November.

![coin market cap](https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-monitalks-media/Picture_1_79b313f394.png)
 
•	Celo [(CELO) ](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/celo/)was up by more than 50%. CELO is the Celo ecosystem native asset, which aims to increase cryptocurrency adoption among smartphone users. During the week, it was reported by major news outlets that Celo has [partnered ](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/11/21/mobile-focused-blockchain-celo-partners-with-ethereum-software-firm-consensys/)with ConsenSys, an Ethereum software company that played an integral role in the Merge (the transitioning of Ethereum from a Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake network). 

Overall, this partnership will help Celo developers to tap into the technological solution of ConsenSys, which will improve its scalability. Within the week, CELO's trading volume moved from the lowest daily value of $7 million to the highest value of $210 million. On 21 November, CELO opened with a trading price of $0.4329, climbed to a weekly high of $0.714 on 26 November, and saw a decline to a weekly low of $0.4178. It was trading for $0.6737 during the late hours of 27 November CELO gained 55% within the period.
 
![coin market cap](https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-monitalks-media/Picture_2_f0823dd454.png)

•	Curve DAO [(CRV)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/curve-dao-token/) spiked by more than 30%. CRV, like other digital assets housed in the ecosystems of the decentralized application (Dapp), is the novel token for Curve, a stablecoin-based decentralised exchange that relies on an automated market maker (AMM) to oversee liquidity. Curve generated [$3.75 billion](https://dune.com/hagaetc/dex-metrics) as trading volume throughout October. Due to the ongoing FTX bankruptcy case, which has led to the halting of digital asset withdrawals on some platforms, there has been a marked increase in stablecoin use. Since Curve is mainly tailored to stablecoin trading, many investors turned to CRV during the week. CRV's daily trading volume ascended from $58 million to $970 million.

CRV opened on 21 November with a relatively lower trading price of $0.5119. The DeFi token reached a weekly low of $0.4096 on 22 November and increased to a weekly high of $0.7538 on 26 November. In the late hours of 27 November, CRV was exchanging hands for $0.7044 on many crypto trading platforms. CRV spiked by 37% within the period.
 
![coin market cap](https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-monitalks-media/Picture_3_e64bab2b45.png)

•	Dogecoin [(DOGE)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/) brought more than 30% gains to holders. DOGE is the native asset of the meme-inspired project by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus, creators who decided to poke fun at the idea of Bitcoin (BTC) dethroning the centralised finance system. DOGE has been soaring based on a rumour from David Gokhstein, who [commented via his Twitter account](https://twitter.com/davidgokhshtein/status/1596010692070764544?s=20&t=IyhWVKTyIxmqIxX_Xir8OQ) that there could be developments to the Dogecoin project by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and new Twitter boss and DOGE promoter Elon Musk. 

The demand for DOGE skyrocketed from a minimum daily volume of $360 million to $1.84 billion within seven days. DOGE opened at $0.07718 on 21 November and reached a low of $0.0724 on the same day. The largest meme-inspired digital asset by market capitalization soared to a weekly high of $0.1064 on 27 November and traded for $0.1052 on the back of Asia, as an early mover of the cryptocurrency industry. As of 11:50 UTC on 27 November, DOGE had soared by 36%.
 
![coin market cap](https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-monitalks-media/Picture_4_585d8697c1.png)

•	ApeCoin [(APE)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/apecoin-ape/) Rose More than 20%. APE is the novel token of the ApeCoin ecosystem. On 23 November, it was reported that ApeCoin decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) had l[aunched a community-driven non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.](https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/11/23/apecoin-dao-launches-community-driven-nft-marketplace/#:~:text=ApeCoin%20DAO%2C%20a%20community%2Dled,APE%20ecosystem%2C%20launched%20in%20March.) In the crypto finance industry, exchange listing, the launch of new products by a project, the provision of staking services, and the adoption of a coin or token by a mainstream company are the primary drivers of a cryptocurrency's price. 

Leaning on the successes of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Otherdeeds among Yuga Labs' (creators of the projects) products, APE opened at $3.03 on 21 November, reached a low of $2.86 during the week on 22 November, and reached a high of $3.94 on 27 November. As of 11:50 UTC on 27 November, APE had a trading price of $3.83. Like all the aforementioned top-performing crypto tokens, APE also saw a significant rise in daily trading volume from $79 million to $215 million.
 
![coin market cap](https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-monitalks-media/Picture_5_37da79bf9d.png)

Other top performing crypto included coins that saw multiple percentage gains during the week, such as Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink (LIN), Dash (DASH), Aptos (APT), Convex Finance (CVX), Binance Coin (BNB), Solana (SOL), Casper (CSPR), Aave (AAVE), Ethereum Classic (ETC), and Theta Network (THETA).






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