Metaverse-related tokens took off shortly after Facebook FB +2.1% announced Thursday it would rebrand itself as Meta in a bid to reorient itself around augmented and virtual reality-charged future.
The category’s market cap shot up by 262.9% in the past 18 hours and now stands at $13.4 billion, according to cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko.
Half a dozen coins, including some of the largest like MANA, Ethereum token powering the Decentraland virtual reality platform, and STARL, a native asset of the namesake decentralized virtual space project, are up by more than 50% on the day. The largest gainer of the day is ETHV (Ethverse), token of a virtual universe built using the Minecraft gaming engine and Ethereum blockchain, with a 112.8% increase.
Token of popular NFT-based online video game Axie Infinity, which has generated more than $7.5 billion in sales, has risen 11%.
Facebook’s stock closed with a modest 1.5% increase after the social media giant announced it would change its name to Meta, reflecting its bet on the next iteration of the internet centered around virtual experiences. The rebranding comes amid a barrage of reports related to the company’s lack of control over the spread of misinformation and inflammatory content on its platform.
