Omicron crypto rises meteorically with new Covid-19 variant 2021

The new, highly virulent Covid-19 variant tanked the crypto market last Friday, with dire warnings issued to investors. Bitcoin (BTC/USD) lost more than 5% in a matter of hours last week, wiping billions from the combined cryptocurrency market capitalization.

Yet, there is one winner – a tiny coin called Omicron (OMIC), which has gained around 500% ever since the World Health Organization gave the new Covid-19 variant its name, Forbes Magazine reported.  

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It’s up 77% today, changing hands for $639 at the time of writing. Last month, we witnessed the inexplicable rise and fall of a scam coin, which was purported to be connected to the Squid Game, but turned out to have nothing to do with it at all. The highly volatile crypto market often sees obscure coins rise meteorically in value, only to dissipate like shooting stars.

OMIC’s value has increased almost eightfold in the last few days according to data from CoinGecko. At the moment, SushiSwap (SUSHI/USD) is the only platform where it can be traded. It runs on the Arbitrum blockchain. Decentralized exchanges like SushiSwap are quite vulnerable to rug pulls, exploits, and hacks, often resulting in loss of funds.

Martha Reyes, head of research at Bequant, stated in an email to Forbes:

The news of a new Covid variant coming out of South Africa led to a broad-based sell-off across asset classes. If lockdowns do ensue, which is not our base case scenario, that will lead to further helicopter money, which ultimately benefits digital assets.

The major crypto sell-off last week, where traditional markets fell as well, surprised some crypto analysts who are used to coin prices and stock prices moving independently of each other. Tally Greenberg, head of business development at Allnodes, wrote in an email to Forbes:

The cryptocurrency market, for the most part, doesn’t correlate with the traditional markets. However, there come times when even cryptocurrency follows world events. The news of a new Covid-19 variant has shaken the world with yet another uncertainty about our global road to recovery, which caused a major dip for large and small cryptocurrencies and plummeting stocks and bonds across all nations.