What Drove the MANA Cryptocurrency so High?

Decentraland (MANA) has been one of the top performing cryptocurrencies of the past two weeks. These weeks have seen the price of MANA soar to a new all-time high, and then 25% higher than that all-time high. 

If there is any indication that the altcoin bulls have finally arrived, then the massive pump of MANA is certainly it. 

What is Decentraland?

Have you heard of the metaverse? 

Decentraland taps into the narrative because it’s an entirely decentralized virtual reality. The funding for this project is, of course, from the MANA cryptocurrency, which serves as the native token on the blockchain. 

Anyway, the metaverse narrative has skyrocketed over the past month ever since Facebook changed their name to Meta Platforms to signify a shift to focusing on development of a metaverse. 

For those that don’t know, a metaverse is still theoretical, but it basically refers to a digital, hyper realistic virtual reality where players control avatars. The movie and book Ready Player One offers a good account of what a metaverse in the future could look like. 

Players control avatars in the virtual world. It’s basically a massive multiplayer online game (MMO) with hyper realistic virtual reality. Players/avatars can have digital properties, clothes, weapons, and even partake in combat. 

As a side note, this is likely where the future of non-fungible tokens is heading. CryptoPunks and Bored Apes will be the sought after artwork of the metaverse. 

Why is MANA Up So Much Recently?

The recent price boom of MANA can be traced back to two main reasons with some secondary reasons likely playing a factor in the price increase. 

A huge, major driver of the price increase came because a subsidiary of Tokens.com called The Metaverse Group purchased virtual real estate in Decentraland worth $2.4 million USD. The Metaverse Group paid for this real estate with ~618,000 MANA. 

As you can imagine, the announcement of this news caused a massive increase in the price of MANA. 

The other reason for the price increase likely has to do with the Alpha launch of a separate metaverse project called Sandbox (SAND) on November 29th. It’s a scenario where a rising tide raises all ships. 

All these projects increase publicity for the metaverse narrative. This causes people to FOMO into different projects with the hope that the project they pick becomes the metaverse of the future. 

We know this can be a case of causation not equalling correlation, but it does appear that the increasing publicity is helping the industry as a whole despite Sandbox and Decentraland competing with each other. 

Why Did Metaverse Group Spend $2.4 million USD on Digital Property in Decentraland?

You probably saw the headline about Metaverse Group buying digital property worth $2.4 million USD and laughed. It sounds ridiculous that anyone would pay that much money for digital property. You can’t even touch it!

Well, Metaverse Group had a very good reason for buying that digital property. For one, it’s a piece of property in a high-profile fashion district of Decentraland. Basically, Metaverse Group probably views a $2.4 million price tag as a steal because of the future potential of the property. 

The area Metaverse Group’s property is located has the potential to become a sort of Times Square of Decentraland. From that perspective, Metaverse Group likely views the $2.4 million price tag the same way someone would view purchasing a Times Square or downtown San Francisco property in the 1980s. 

It’s not worth much at the moment, but in time it will become an extremely valuable piece of real estate. 

Where to Buy MANA?

You can purchase on a surprising number of centralized exchanges. Binance, Kraken, eToro, Huobi, FTX,  and Coinbase all sell MANA. 

It’s also an ERC-20 token, which even makes it possible to purchase on a decentralized Ethereum exchange like Uniswap or Sushiswap. 

We will put it this way, if you want to purchase MANA, then you should have no problem purchasing it. 

It’s just really easy to find it for sale on a bunch of different exchanges. 

MANA Token Information

Token Type: ERC-20

Name (ticker): Decentraland ($MANA)

Price: $4.59

Market Cap (rank): $8 billion (#24)

Circulating Supply: 1,824,611,535 MANA

Is MANA a Good Investment?

Whether or not MANA is a good investment for you depends on how much faith you have in the metaverse. Do you believe the metaverse will actually become a thing? Or is the metaverse just something from sci-fi?

If you believe the metaverse idea will become a reality, then you still have to consider whether or not Decentraland will become a successful metaverse. From what we have seen, the team behind Decentraland is very dedicated to developing a functioning metaverse. They have also delivered a functional play to earn game, which is a good first step. 

As for those that do not believe the metaverse will become a reality, betting against technology has never worked out well for people. We understand why you might not want to invest in Decentraland, but not believing technology will progress has always been a bad bet. 

Closing Thoughts

That covers it for why MANA has seen such a sharp rise in price over the past few weeks. It basically comes down to a lot of hype surrounding the idea of the metaverse combined with an investment group purchasing a $2.4 million digital property in Decentraland. 

We believe that the metaverse will become a reality at some point in the future. And Decentraland has certainly positioned themselves as one project that could have a major first mover advantage in the future.