Week 38 was the last full week of Q3 2021, so it is time to take a quick look back on how the cryptocurrency market has performed this quarter. The total market capitalization at the beginning of the quarter was $1.4 trillion and it climbed up to above $1.9 trillion at the end of Week 38, which represents an almost 37% increase. While ETH and BTC led the rally in August, this changed in September, when altcoins, such as Polkadot, Avalanche, Solana, Fantom and Algorand, stepped into the limelight of the community’s attention. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing digital art, collectibles, and in-game items were still very popular, and, for now, it does not look like the interest in these tokens is dying out. In fact, two of the three projects featured in this week’s Top Coins to Watch article are from the NFT sector. Although pushed a little bit more in the background of media attention, DeFi protocols are still evolving and expanding. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi increased from below $70 billion to over $85 billion throughout Q3.
