The price of the cryptocurrency RUNE surged 109% in the last week
Over the past week, the native cryptocurrency of the THORChain network, RUNE, has experienced a notable surge of 109% in its price.
This surge has propelled RUNE from $5 just seven days ago to $11 in the current session, marking it as the cryptocurrency with the most substantial increase over the last week, as illustrated in the following TradingView chart.
The price uptick follows a sideways trading phase from February to early March. Nevertheless, the primary driver behind this surge has been a series of initiatives undertaken by the team responsible for THORChain protocol development.
On March 5th, the protocol announced the burning of 60 million RUNE tokens as part of an effort to expand its lending capacity by $100 million. This action, driven by the simple law of supply and demand, had an immediate impact on the price of the crypto asset, pushing it upward.
Similarly, it also influenced the total value locked in THORChain, which has seen a notable increase, rising from $346 million to $537 million since the initiative was announced, according to data from DefiLlama.
The lending protocol, known as THORFi Lending, allows users to borrow bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) without incurring interest and was launched in August 2023, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
When a user requests a loan on the platform, the provided collateral becomes a new asset called TOR, while the difference between the collateral value and the loan amount is burned, thus reducing the total circulating token supply.
Furthermore, a protocol version update from 1.127.2 to 1.128.0 was carried out, providing increased "space available for loans." This adjustment involves a decrease in collateral ratios for BTC and ETH to 200%, enabling users to borrow up to half the value of their assets.
The THORChain team anticipates that this adjustment "will stimulate additional lending activity due to the favorable conditions.