AAVE Price Jumps 19% Amid Aptos Launch, Powell’s Dovish Comments, and WLFI Rumors

On August 24, AAVE surged nearly 19% to $355.29, leading the top 40 cryptocurrencies by daily gains. This sharp rise followed Aave’s recent launch on the Aptos blockchain, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s dovish remarks, and rumors concerning Aave’s potential exposure to the WLFI token.

What Is Aave and Why It Matters

Aave is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that enables users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies without intermediaries. The platform uses smart contracts to manage loans, requiring borrowers to post collateral above the loan value.

The AAVE token underpins the ecosystem. It can be staked for security and rewards, used as collateral for loans, and provides holders with governance rights. Token holders gain voting power and fee benefits, making AAVE central to the protocol’s functioning.

Aptos Expansion: A New Chapter for Aave

On August 21, Aave Labs announced the launch of Aave V3 on Aptos — its first deployment on a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain. The team rewrote the codebase in the Move programming language, redesigned the user interface, and adapted the protocol to Aptos’s virtual machine.

This launch included audits, a mainnet capture-the-flag competition, and a $500,000 bug bounty program. Initial markets support assets like APT, sUSDe, USDT, and USDC, with supply and borrowing caps set to increase over time. Risk assessments were carried out by Chaos Labs and Llama Risk, while Chainlink provides reliable price feeds.

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov described the launch as “an incredible milestone,” marking a major step beyond five years of exclusivity on EVM-compatible chains.

Powell’s Dovish Speech Boosts Crypto Sentiment

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Friday added positive momentum. Powell indicated that the risks between inflation and employment were shifting, signaling that interest rate cuts could begin as soon as September.

Markets responded bullishly, with CME FedWatch data showing an 83% probability of a quarter-point rate cut next month, up from 75% earlier in the week. Both U.S. equities and cryptocurrencies rallied broadly after Powell’s remarks, with AAVE among the top gainers.

Rumors of Exposure to WLFI Token

Adding to the excitement are rumors about Aave’s exposure to WLFI, the governance token of World Liberty Financial — a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump’s family.

Back in October 2024, World Liberty Financial proposed launching its own Aave V3 instance on Ethereum mainnet. The proposal indicated:

• AaveDAO would receive 20% of protocol fees generated by the WLFI Aave V3 instance.
• Approximately 7% of WLFI’s total token supply would be allocated to AaveDAO for governance participation, liquidity mining, and promoting platform decentralization.

An analyst at Delphi Digital noted on social media that with WLFI’s token scheduled to start trading on September 1 at an implied $27.3 billion valuation, Aave’s stake could be worth about $1.9 billion — more than a third of AAVE’s current fully diluted valuation of roughly $5 billion. This potential exposure may be partially fueling AAVE’s rally as investors reconsider its significance.

However, the WLFI team publicly denied that Aave will receive 7% of WLFI’s total token supply, labeling the claim as false and “fake news.”

Technical Analysis Highlights

According to CoinDesk Research, AAVE saw significant price gains between August 22 (12:00 UTC) and August 23 (11:00 UTC), rising from $297.75 to $353.22 — an 18.65% increase that reflects growing investor confidence in Aave’s expansion.

During this period, AAVE traded within a $62.11 range, between $294.50 and $356.60. The most substantial price jump happened at 14:00 UTC on August 22, when trading volume spiked to 340,907 units — more than triple the daily average of 102,554 units.

Sustained buying was observed in the final hour analyzed (10:49 to 11:48 UTC on August 23), with prices moving up from $349.61 to $353.79. Trading volumes regularly surpassed 3,000 units at key price levels near $352.55, $353.98, and $355.52, well above the session average of 1,647 units, indicating steady institutional positioning.