Filecoin surges 10%, here’s why

The global crypto market printed green indexes as Bitcoin (BTC) tries to regain the crucial $100k mark. Filecoin (FIL) turns out to be one of the biggest gainers among the top cryptos amid easing off selling pressure after a week of turbulence. The cumulative digital asset market cap surged marginally to stand at $3.51 trillion.

Filecoin soared as high as 12% in the last 24 hours over South Korea’s top crypto exchange, Bithumb, major announcement. The move has sparked market enthusiasm with FIL futures open interest also jumping 20%.

FIL gains 21% in 7 days

On January 6, Bithumb in a post revealed the listing of Filecoin in the KRW market. The exchange set an initial reference price of 8,680 KRW and announced guidelines for safe trading, including limits on buying and extreme selling orders.

The announcement boosted FIL’s price to $6.23, hitting a 12% 24-hour surge. FIL price is now up by 21% in the last 7 days despite recording a slump of 23% over the past 30 days. FIL is trading at an average price of $6.04, at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume spiked by 180% to stand at $524 million.

Futures trading has exploded. CoinGlass data shows Filecoin futures volume hit $712 million which is a 200% increase in 24 hours. Open interest also surged 20% to $363 million, led by Binance ($142 million) and OKX ($66 million).

CoinGlass data shows that around $3 million worth of bets set on FIL got liquidated over the last day. More than $1.82 million worth of liquidated positions (61%) turned out to be short bets. This suggests that traders were expecting a downturn to continue for Filecoin but recent developments helped the crypto to jump on the upward trend.

Messari crowns Filecoin as DePIN leader

Messari data has placed Filecoin as the leader in the DePIN category for 2024. The company hints at exciting advancements in 2025, dubbing it the “next chapter” in its journey. It mentioned a consistent increase in storage utilization, indicating a growing demand for Filecoin’s services. However, its utilization grew from 18% in the 4th quarter of 2023 to nearly 30% by the 3rd quarter of 2024.

As the new year begins, the findings from @MessariCrypto‘s Theses for 2025 remain a testament to Filecoin’s growing momentum. From nearly 30% storage utilization growth to advancements like FWS and Fast Finality (F3), Filecoin is shaping the future of decentralized storage. pic.twitter.com/zQZBb1zdii

— Filecoin (@Filecoin) January 5, 2025

It highlighted that Filecoin introduced the Filecoin Web Services (FWS) framework. Its “Waffle” upgrade and Filecoin Fast Finality (F3) were implemented in order to address scalability and efficiency challenges. F3 reduces transaction finality times by 450x and lowers the finalization of blocks from 7.5 hours to minutes.

The report added that Filecoin also partnered with SingularityNET and Theoriq AI to expand its role in decentralized AI infrastructure. This enables new applications and infrastructure to be built on Filecoin, expanding its ecosystem.