A crypto thing called Omicron has soared more than 900% since Saturday because there is now also a Covid variant called omicron. That's it. That's the reason.
Omicron the Covid Variant has roiled global markets because of fear that its many mutations could help it evade immunity defenses, although there is also hope it may cause milder disease.
Omicron the Crypto Thing is, in the words of CoinTelegraph, “a recently introduced decentralized reserve currency protocol that runs on the Ethereum layer-two network Arbitrum. Its native OMIC token is backed by several other crypto assets including the USD Coin stablecoin and liquidity provider tokens. It can only be traded on the SushiSwap decentralized exchange.”
“Bond-based yield farming project” is another way to describe it. Do you understand what all of those words mean? What are words? What is meaning? After carefully balancing these factors, Bloomberg Opinion initiates coverage of Omicron the Crypto Thing with a “conviction buy” rating. (Please for the love of God and all that is holy, realize that this is a "joke." Do not buy Omicron the Crypto Thing without consulting legitimate financial research and advice. Omicron the Crypto Thing may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Do not taunt Omicron the Crypto Thing.)
Omicron the Crypto Thing jumped to roughly $700 from $65 between Saturday and Monday, as news of Omicron the Covid Variant spread. Do we even need to talk about how ridiculous this is? Here is an asset trading on an obscure, risky exchange that is less than a month old and so illiquid we don’t even have market-cap data for it yet. It has nothing to do with the Covid variant, aside from maybe the disease's third-derivative effects on commerce, sentiment and markets, making it part of an investment universe that includes roughly everything in existence.
As such, Omicron the Crypto Thing’s overnight explosion "perhaps represents peak irrationality,” ventures CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole. Perhaps!
