Metaverse Tokens Trend Accelerates: SAND and MANA Skyrocket on the Weekly

It’s been an exciting few days for Metaverse aficionados, especially when it comes to valuations across the cryptocurrency board. While the broader market is rather shaky and indecisive, with a few exceptions, of course, play-to-earn and metaverse tokens are popping off.

Gains Everywhere

Looking at CoinMarketCap’s Metaverse board tells us that more than 80% of the projects that have something to do with this topic are trading in the green on a weekly basis.

Amongst the leaders, especially in the past couple of days, is The Sandbox (SAND). The cryptocurrency is up over 110% in the week, and it shows no signs of slowing down, trading above $8 and setting new highs daily. It’s also the third-biggest play-to-earn (P2E) token in terms of market capitalization.

The biggest project – Decentraland – managed to overtake Axie Infinity in market cap following an impressive 56% weekly increase. MANA is now worth over $5.60, while AXS lags behind with just 5% gains in the past week.

Other noteworthy mentions include MyNeighborAlice (ALICE) – up 100%, Enjin Coin (ENJ) – up 57.61%, Ultra (UOS) – up 105%, Mines of Dalarnia (DAR) – up 104%, and so forth.

What’s Driving the Surge?

There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason behind the massive increase in P2E coins other than the general hype that’s been following them ever since Facebook rebranded to Meta.

However, it’s also worth mentioning that a lot of infrastructure smart money is being invested in this market segment ever since that happened. As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Enjin is gearing up to explore the metaverse by establishing a $100 million fund, seeking to help projects in the ecosystem designed towards decentralizing it.

In addition, KuCoin – one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges – also launched a $100 million fund through its investment and research arm – KuCoin Labs – also seeking to fund early-stage projects in the field.

Meanwhile, several high-profile institutional investors and venture capital firms such as the Winklevoss twins, Marc Andreessen, Alan Howard, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) raised another $100 million to accelerate the emergence of the metaverse through Sfermion – an NFT investment firm.

It appears that smart money is betting considerably on the success of this particular market segment and, at the time of press, valuations are being reflective.