Uncategorized

People Are Selling Digital Socks for $92,000 on Ethereum’s Uniswap

img-ads

In brief

  • The price of Unisocks tokens has reached an all-time high of over $92,000.
  • Issued by Uniswap in 2019, SOCKS tokens are backed by physical, limited-edition pairs of socks.
  • So far, 185 users have already redeemed their tokens for the meme footwear.

The price of Unisocks (SOCKS) has reached a new all-time high of over $92,000. These digital socks are “memeful” crypto tokens issued by decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI).

What can owning one get you? Well, a physical pair of socks. And that’s it.

“500 pairs of digital socks have a market cap of $20 million. Memes are the new money,” tweeted Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at Coinshares, on Tuesday.

At press time, SOCKS are trading at around $64,600, down 24.6% on the day, according to crypto metrics platform CoinGecko.

How did this all start?

In 2019, Uniswap created 500 SOCKS tokens. The original idea was that they are “backed” by the same amount of physical, limited-edition pairs of socks. But they also came with a unique price scale.

The very first SOCKS token was listed for $12, but the price of each subsequent sale has been increasing according to a dynamic curve since then. This has led to the current, absurd price high.

At the end of January, Unisocks were trading at around $12,625. But their price skyrocketed up to over $92,000 on February 16. This means that the market capitalization of SOCKS peaked at around $28 million at the time.

Notably, the surge coincided with Uniswap itself becoming the first DeFi trading platform to generate over $100 billion in volume.

“Uniswap just became the first decentralized trading platform to process over $100b in volume - an exciting milestone for DeFi,” Uniswap’s founder Hayden Adams tweeted on February 16.

To turn their tokens into socks, Unisock holders must redeem their tokens, taking them out of circulation. According to Unisocks’ website, there are currently only 315 SOCKS tokens left out of 500 in circulation, so 185 crypto enthusiasts have already redeemed their pretty expensive footwear.

As Decrypt reported, Ethereum-based, non-fungible tokens CryptoPunks are also selling for outrageous sums of money, with the latest pixelated picture of a male “punk” being auctioned off for 78 ETH (roughly $150,000).

And it wasn’t even backed by a real, physical punk’s head.

img-ads

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

You may also like

Bitcoin Blockchain Policy & Regulation

Switzerland’s ‘Crypto Valley’ Has Started Accepting Bitcoin, Ether for Tax Payments

The Swiss canton of Zug has started accepting tax payments in cryptocurrency.

In a previous announcement in 2020, the Swiss authorities said that, from February, citizens and companies based in Zug will be able to pay up to 100,000 CHF (around $111,300) of their taxes in either bitcoin or ether. No partial payments in cryptocurrency will be accepted.

Zug has been dubbed “Crypto Valley” over the many industry companies drawn to the jurisdiction over its friendly blockchain and crypto regulation. 

“As the home of the Crypto Valley, it is important to us to further promote and simplify the use of cryptocurrencies in everyday life,” said Zug’s finance director, Heinz Tannler, when the tax initiative was announced.

Zug-based crypto broker and custodian Bitcoin Suisse has…

View More Article
Blockchain

Ether Looks Overleveraged as Cryptocurrency Hits New High Over $1,900

Ether soared to new record highs Thursday, but an overheated derivatives market may suggest higher volatility is on the way for the short term. 

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market value set the new lifetime high of $1,928 soon before press time, having first breached the previous peak of $1,821.49 reached on Feb. 13 early today, according to CoinDesk 20 data. 

In the derivatives market, the average level of the “funding rate” across major exchanges offering ether perpetuals (futures with no expiry) has risen sharply from 0.069% – just short of the early January record high of 0.21%, according to data source Glassnode. 

“It shows the derivatives market is overleveraged,” Patrick Heusser, head of trading at Swiss-based Crypto Finance AG, told CoinDesk. “With this current structure, I do not feel…

View More Article
Bitcoin Blockchain Business Tech

Chinese Retailer Goes From Bubble Tea to Crypto Mining in Unlikely Pivot

A retailer of specialty teas and baked goods based in Hunan, China is expanding its business into cryptocurrency mining.

According to a press release on Thursday, Urban Tea Inc. has hired two new executives ahead of its strategic expansion into its new cryptocurrency venture.

Fengdan Zhou has been hired as the company’s new chief operating officer (COO), while Yunfei Song has signed on as an independent director.

Zhou, who will lead the company’s implementation of its “blockchain and bitcoin business plan,” brings a wealth of experience in building and managing blockchain data centers, mining equipment and digital currency tech development, according to Urban Tea.

Meanwhile, Song is expected to provide guidance on the company’s blockchain development strategy. The independent director is a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences with a…

View More Article
Blockchain Policy & Regulation

How Staking and Eth 2.0 Makes the Ethereum Economy More “Sustainable”

In this episode, Christine Kim and Will Foxley discuss with David Hoffman, the co-founder of Bankless, the market implications of a dual Ethereum blockchain and what new realities staking presents to the long-term value proposition of ether.

According to Hoffman’s “Ether as a triple-point asset” thesis, Ethereum 2.0 bolsters ether’s value proposition as a capital asset. This is because Eth 2.0 enables staking on the protocol level.

For all ether holders with a minimum balance of 32 ETH, they can earn an annual percentage return for locking in their crypto assets to the network and becoming a validator. This is a use case for ether on top of its existing functionalities as a form of payment for fees and as a store of…

View More Article
Bitcoin

Russian crypto mining firm scrambles to meet foreign demand

Global cryptocurrency mining operators are increasingly moving their equipment to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States as they chase lower energy prices.

Igor Runets, founder and CEO of Russian crypto mining firm BitRiver, told local news agency Kommersant Thursday that the company is actively building up its power capacity to meet increasing demand from American and European investors.

According to the executive, BitRiver has run out of spare capacity at its data centers, having fully reserved all of its power for the next 18 months. During this period, the company expects to co-locate mining equipment of total mining power estimated at 1 GWh.

BitRiver, which operates the largest colocation services for Bitcoin (BTC) mining in Russia and the CIS region, is now building two new data centers in Russia, including an 80 MWh facility in Krasnoyarsk and a 300 MWh center in the Republic of Buryatia….

View More Article
%d bloggers like this: