A new DeFi token, Omicron (OMIC) has received a large boost, on the back of a new COVID-19 Variant going by the same name.
This follows an announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the new COVID-19 Omicron Variant, thought to be more virulent and capable of spreading throughout the whole world.
A cloud of uncertainty prevails around this new variant, as scientists report that it could be a matter of weeks or months before COVID-19 Omicron’s exact severity is determined.
The COVID-19 Omicron news was however a blessing in disguise for the OMIC token, which rallied to an all-time high. OMIC is a decentralized reserve currency token whose blockchain coincidentally shares the name of the new variant.
It was launched in early November but started to rally over this past weekend, shooting close to 1000% as news of the new variant came out.
Crypto price tracker Coingecko reports that the Omicron token multiplied its price almost tenfold between last Friday and Monday morning, picking up bids at $70 on late Friday and peaking in the region of $711 as of Sunday, before going back down.
On its website, the token is described as ‘a decentralized treasury-backed currency protocol’. This price volatility of the OMIC token is reminiscent of BTC, which itself dropped more than 8% on Friday, in a 2-month low. This is just weeks after hitting its all-time high (ATH).
Both Crypto and Equity markets went into immediate turmoil when the WHO expressed concerns about the new Omicron COVID-19 Variant, as investors scrambled to allocate back capital to more stable investment vehicles like cash and stocks.
These market movements in turn saw an overall drop in the prices of all major cryptocurrencies.
Far from being a stable long-term asset yet, OMIC is however backed with solid assets which include the USDC stablecoin. The Omicron crypto project is built on an Ethereum scaling technology called Arbitrum, as a bond-based yield farming venture, with the project token supply capped at 1,000,000 OMIC tokens.
It is not uncommon for there to be Crypto tokens launched to benefit from the internet and meme culture. What this usually means however is that they will experience rapid booms and busts as the events they are linked to fade away. Other such tokens include Dogecoin and Squid Game.
