A cryptocurrency called Omicron (OMIC), bearing the same name as the new COVID-19 has spiked more than 900 percent over the last 48 hours.
While global markets fell last week on the discovery of a new Omicron coronavirus type, one cryptocurrency bearing the name Omicron skyrocketed as the Greek letter entered the investor lexicon.
At the time of writing this article, Omicron, which is described on its website as “a decentralized treasury-backed currency protocol,” was trading at around $430.17 with a previous high of $691.74, Omicron is up 28.41% in the last 24 hours.
The World Health Organization (WHO) brought shocking news and designated the new COVID-19 variation Omicron on Friday, warning it poses a “very high” worldwide risk of outbreaks as more nations report cases.
On the same day, Bitcoin had its worst day in almost two months, falling more than 8% as investors sold stocks and other riskier assets in favour of perceived safe havens like the dollar. It has nearly recovered all of its losses since then, with global markets returning to some sense of normalcy on Monday.
Minor cryptocurrencies, ranging from Squid Game to Dogecoin, have benefited this year from linkages to memes or web culture, seeing fast peaks while more established names like Bitcoin skyrocket in popularity.
The Omicron token powers a decentralised reserve currency protocol on the Arbitrum Network. The token is backed by a basket of assets, including USDC and liquidity provider tokens tied to MIM. It’s a fork of OlympusDAO, a novel DeFi project that backs its token through primitive blockchain bonds.
The original Omicron first surfaced on August 31, 2016 on the Bitcoin Talk forum as a “dividend-issuing currency.”
The project claimed to have raised 121 bitcoin, which is currently valued at $6.5 million — before the Omicron virus crashed the markets this week, its raise would have been worth a whole lot more. The project fizzled away after a few dividend payments.
If only the project’s creators had known how significant the term “Omicron” would become just five years later. At the very least, they projected that the cryptocurrency bubble would burst.
