During the past 30 days, the layer one blockchain asset aptos (APT) has risen 391.8% against the U.S. dollar. In the past seven days, Aptos has increased 123.7% after reaching an all-time high of $19.92 per unit on Jan. 26, 2023.

The Role of Decentralized Finance, Infrastructure Support, and NFTs in Aptos’ Recent Surge in Value

A relatively new cryptocurrency, aptos (APT), reached an all-time high on Thursday when the token hit $19.92 per coin. Aptos, which launched in mid-Oct. 2022, was created by two developers who previously worked on Meta’s Diem project before it was discontinued. The project is also supported by several venture capital firms including Parafi, Andreessen Horowitz, and Multicoin Capital.

When the mainnet went live and aptos (APT) started trading, the price increased about 20%. However, like the rest of the cryptocurrency market during the last two months of 2022, the value of aptos dropped. On Dec. 29, 2022, aptos reached an all-time low of $3.08 per coin. As of Jan. 27, however, the value of APT is 474% higher. Today, aptos’ value is around 11% lower than its all-time high of $19.92 per coin, and in the past 24 hours, APT reached a low of $17.37 per unit.

Currently, APT is the 28th largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization out of the entire $1 trillion cryptocurrency market. On Friday, aptos had an overall market capitalization of around $2.83 billion. At the time of writing, aptos has a circulating supply of around 160.54 million APT tokens and in the last 24 hours, the token has seen $813 million in global trading volume. While some traders attempted to short the market during the climb in value, many were ultimately unsuccessful.

“I got completely wiped out,” one trader wrote on Wednesday. “I never short, today I decided to do it and I lost everything. I committed to my APT short and got destroyed. I’m left with nothing, even my bags I sold trying to save that f***ing short. It hurts, I’ve never lost so much in my entire life,” the trader added.

The recent surge in aptos (APT) is being attributed to its deployment by the leading decentralized exchange Pancakeswap. Aptos’ total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) has climbed rapidly in recent weeks, with Pancakeswap accounting for 57.62%.

The price rise is also being credited to the blockchain’s issuance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and NFT projects like Aptos Land Genesis, Aptos Monkeys, Babyapetos, and Aptopunks. Aptos-based NFTs are seeing significant trading activity on the NFT marketplace topaz.so. Furthermore, APT has also been recently integrated with Atomic Wallet, a defi Web3 wallet with more than 5 million users.