(Figure 1) As illustrated by the red line, WBTC's Gini Coefficient has been static compared to the total amount of WBTC addresses being created.
The past month has definitely been all about DeFi as we saw Total Value Locked in DeFi Ethereum smart contracts rise from around $1 billion to now close to $4 billion. Recent trends such as yield farming and the onboard of Curve’s new interest products have been the two largest harbingers of this new surge in DeFi hysteria. As reported before in an earlier PANews article last week, the amount of BTC value on the Ethereum protocol has risen 240% to a current reading of 20,098 BTC, which equates to around $221 million based on current price levels.
This phenomenon is due in large part to the increased values of Bitcoin backed tokens such as WBTC, renBTC, and others. As WBTC, Wrapped Bitcoin, has been the most used, it has also seen a 4x increase in the total number of WBTC addresses on the Ethereum protocol. But despite this increased influx of WBTC addresses, which should in part translate to more diverse users, the Gini Coefficient has been static for the past year ranging between 0.955 and close to 1. Basically, this means that the majority of WBTC value is in the hands of a few addresses.
The Gini Coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality within a nation or other group of people with 0 meaning perfectly equal to 1 meaning completely unequal with the wealth of a nation in the hands of one person. To give you some perspective, back in a 2014 study, the Gini Coefficient in China and the USA is 0.55 and 0.45, respectively. Although comparing global economies to crypto economics is like apples to oranges, it does give a good glimpse of the “earliness” of this space. It is inevitable that we need some initial capital pouring into the space in order to get the party started.
Considering that these are still early days in crypto, let’s hope for a more even balanced distribution.
