OMIC had launched at the beginning of November — and for most of the past week, was trading steady at about $65. But over the weekend, the token surged to highs of $689… up close to 1,000%.
A DeFi token that shares the same name as the new Omicron coronavirus variant surged over the weekend.
OMIC had launched at the beginning of November — and for most of the past week, was trading steady at about $65.
But over the weekend, the token surged to highs of $689… up close to 1,000%.
That came after the World Health Organization officially named a new strain of COVID-19 discovered in southern Africa.
"Variants of concern" are assigned letters of the Greek alphabet — but a couple of letters have been skipped for this latest strain.
Technically speaking, this strain should have been named Nu. But given we're regularly talking about new variants, that would cause confusion.
Next on the list would have been Xi, but that wouldn't have proven popular given how this is the name of a certain world leader.
All of this prompted the WHO to settle on Omicron.
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Be Careful
OMIC appears to have outperformed the likes of BTC and ETH over the weekend, but that doesn't mean it's a worthwhile investment.
Little is known about this decentralized finance project, and robust data surrounding the project is proving hard to come by.
Omicron's official website describes itself as a "decentralized currency protocol built on Arbitrum."
Each OMIC token is said to be backed by a basket of assets, "giving it an intrinsic value that it cannot fall below."
The project's official Twitter account has been gleefully sharing coverage concerning OMIC's rise.
Although there's nothing to suggest that this project has malicious intent, OMIC's sudden surge does draw parallels to Squid Game token.
SQUID had no official affiliation to the hit Netflix show of the same name — and after the token surged to highs of $2,861, it crashed below $0.01.
The WHO's policy of naming new COVID variants after the Greek alphabet has been in place since earlier this year. Previously, strains were often named after the countries or cities where they were discovered — stigmatizing geographical areas.
Cynics would argue that this means long-sighted crypto opportunists have had plenty of time to launch projects named after letters of the Greek alphabet — knowing they may attract attention in the future.
Next in the Greek alphabet is Pi — and there is already a well-known cryptocurrency bearing this name. Expect projects inspired by Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi and Psi to follow soon.
