On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified and named a new COVID-19 variant – Omicron – that was first detected in South Africa. In the last 72 hours, Omicron infections have also been detected in Australia, Denmark and Israel.

Doctors and experts don’t know if Omicron is more easily transmitted or causes severer symptoms than other strains. It is known that the new Omicron variant was discovered and announced, which prompted stock- and cryptocurrency market sell-offs.

However, the price of one small cryptocurrency – ironically named Omicron (OMIC) – has rocketed more than 500% since the WHO named the COVID-19 strain. Omicron traded at $60 per token as of Friday. However, it hit a record high of $431.69 Sunday morning, according to the CoinMarketCap.com chart.

According to that website Omicron has increased more than 82% in the last 24 hours and had a market cap fully diluted of $401 millions as of writing. The OMIC token is described on CoinMarketCap as a “…decentralized reserve currency protocol available on the Arbitrum Network…Each OMIC token is backed by a basket of assets (e.g. USDC, OMIC–MIM LP) are held in OMIC treasury. This gives it an intrinsic worth that cannot be lowered. OMIC also introduces unique economic and game-theoretic dynamics into the market through staking and bonding.”

Flipside

• It’s a bit concerning that a potentially deadly viral strain sparked a meteoric price spike in a similarly named cryptocurrency.

What are the reasons to care?

We’re either becoming desensitized to the viral threat of COVID or willing to exploit nearly anything to make money – neither scenario is especially comforting.

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