Ether Overtook Bitcoin in Kraken Trading as DeFi Tokens Surged

Ether surpassed bitcoin as Kraken’s most-traded crypto asset on January 24, 2021, while tokens associated with decentralized exchanges and lending protocols recorded some of the session’s largest gains.

Kraken reported $403.2 million in ETH spot volume during the UTC reporting day, compared with $364.6 million for XBT, the exchange’s bitcoin symbol. Ether finished the Kraken session at $1,395.90, up 13%, while bitcoin ended at $32,287, up 0.7%.

The result was significant because it showed trading attention shifting toward Ethereum and its decentralized-finance ecosystem during a session in which bitcoin was comparatively stable. It did not mean Ethereum had displaced Bitcoin in overall market value, nor did a one-day token rally establish corresponding growth in protocol use.

The venue-level record

Kraken’s report covered January 24 from 00:00 through 23:59 UTC. The exchange said its figures came from public market data distributed through its WebSockets API, with returns and volumes calculated over that reporting day.

Total Kraken spot volume was $962.8 million, while total futures notional was reported separately at $394.5 million. Ether ranked first among the exchange’s traded crypto assets, followed by bitcoin, tether, polkadot and chainlink.

Several Ethereum-based governance tokens outperformed both leading assets. UNI, the Uniswap token, ended Kraken’s session at $12.065 after gaining 29%, on $9.83 million of reported volume. AAVE closed at $265.44, up 24%, with $11.6 million in volume. The exchange also recorded gains of 20% for SNX and 21% for COMP.

Those percentages are Kraken-specific UTC returns, rounded by the exchange. They should not be treated as universal closing figures because cryptocurrency trades continuously, venues use different reference prices, and the market has no consolidated closing auction.

The broader snapshot confirms the direction

CoinMarketCap’s January 24 historical snapshot broadly corroborates the pattern across its aggregated market data. It recorded ETH at $1,391.61, up 13.05% over 24 hours, with $36.42 billion in reported volume. Bitcoin stood at $32,289.38, up 0.69%, with $48.64 billion in reported volume.

The same snapshot placed UNI at $12.05, up 29.47% over 24 hours, and AAVE at $264.85, up 25.90%. Their seven-day gains were 39.07% and 42.19%, respectively. Bitcoin, by contrast, was down 9.78% over seven days, while ETH was up 13.12%.

CoinMarketCap estimated Ethereum’s market capitalization at $159.18 billion and Bitcoin’s at $600.89 billion. Coinburn calculates from those published figures that Ethereum was approximately 26.5% of Bitcoin’s market value. The day therefore represented a rotation in performance and trading activity, not a reversal of their market-cap rankings.

A contemporaneous Investing.com index reading offers another measurement with visibly different boundaries. At 22:48 GMT, it placed ETH at $1,374.30, up 10.06%, after a preceding 24-hour range of $1,222.14 to $1,374.30. The smaller gain relative to Kraken and CoinMarketCap illustrates why venue, index methodology and timestamp must accompany crypto-market claims.

What the rally established—and what it did not

The verified conclusion is narrow: Ether led Kraken’s crypto spot volumes on January 24, and ETH, UNI and AAVE produced large gains across multiple surviving datasets while bitcoin moved less than 1%.

The synchronized gains are consistent with a DeFi-centered market rotation. That is an interpretation of the price and volume record, not proof of a single cause. Token prices do not measure deposits, loans, exchange usage, revenue or unique users, and the cited records do not isolate news, leverage or on-chain activity responsible for the move.

January 24 nevertheless marked a clear session in which Ethereum-related assets commanded more attention than bitcoin on a major exchange, providing a dated signal that the early-2021 cryptocurrency rally had broadened beyond its largest asset.