Matic, a made-in-India token, traded higher on May 19, when only four or five digital assets out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies showed positive movement.
This native token of Polygon gained 5 percent at $2.27 around 4 pm IST, according to CoinGecko.
Overall the crypto market soured following China's warning to investors about speculative trading in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin plunged as much as 13 percent to trade below the $40,000 level, while ether cracked over 16 percent to give up the $3,000 mark.
On the back of its recent rally, Matic has now found itself as the 14th largest cryptocurrency in the world with a market capitalisation of over $14 billion, LiveMint reported.
Over the last year, it spiked nearly 11,000 percent. New Matic tokens are released monthly. Around six billion tokens are in circulation, with a maximum supply capped at 10 billion, the report said.
So what led to Matic's prophetic rise?
A multitude of factors. The most significant being China's ban on financial and payment institutions. This includes stopping services such as clearing and settlements, trading and even registration for cryptocurrencies.
Apart from this, a tweet from Tech Mogul's Elon Musk sent crypto markets into a flurry. Musk had a latent realisation that cryptocurrencies are "energy-intensive" i.e. – not environment friendly.
Also Read: Bitcoin drops below $40,000 – All you need to know about how and why
What's Matic's story?
A native currency of Polygon, it was founded by three Indian software engineers—Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun.
Through this network, Polygon is attempting to stimulate mass adoption of cryptocurrencies by resolving the problems of scalability on many blockchains.
As per coinmarketcap.com, Matic tokens are used for payment services on Polygon and as a settlement currency between users who operate within the Polygon ecosystem.
How does India react to cryptocurrencies?
India is a big and significant market in the global crypto ecosystem. The average cryptocurrencies sentiment has been steadily growing since December (up 55 percent), and the court ruling has provided (an average) 5 percent rise in the crypto prices across the board.
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