Omicron (OMIC), the relatively obscure cryptocurrency, has surged to an all-time high (ATH) as of yesterday, as a new fast-spreading COVID-19 variant is named.
It has been reported that the bond-based yield farming project began life in early November as a fork of the OlympusDAO DeFi protocol, but it shares no other connection to the virus aside from the name.
However, Omicron’s OMIC token hit an all-time high of $689 during the Monday morning Asian trading session. The move has added another 200% gains on the day for the token and a whopping 945% since Saturday when it was trading around $65.
The report said that the token shares its name with a new COVID-19 variant that was first discovered in South Africa last Tuesday. The World Health Organization named the fast-spreading B.1.1.529 strain after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.
Likewise, Omicron is a recently introduced decentralized reserve currency protocol that runs on the Ethereum layer-two network Arbitrum. Its native OMIC token is backed by several other crypto assets including the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin and liquidity provider tokens. Last week, stock markets slumped as the news of the new COVID-19 variant spread and Black Friday saw a massive sell-off that wiped out November gains for the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite.
The new week began with crypto markets back in the green as of November 29, after falling to their lowest levels since mid-October on Saturday.
Thus, total market capitalization is up 5.6% over the past 48 hours and is currently at $2.71 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
Source: Cointelegraph