Ether hits fresh record high, Sandbox’s SAND leads rally in metaverse coins

Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum’s blockchain, refreshed record highs on Tuesday amid continued bullish flows in the options market. Meanwhile, tokens associated with virtual reality games extended rally on Facebook’s recent championing of metaverse as the next evolution of social technology.

Ether rose to $4,480 during the European hours, surpassing the previous peak price of $4,458 reached on Oct. 29, according to CoinDesk 20.

On Monday, several large bull call spreads crossed the tape on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by volumes and open interest.

As seen in the chart, a bull call spread involves purchasing a call at a particular strike price and simultaneously taking an opposite position in a higher strike call. The strategy is initiated when expecting a measured rise in cryptocurrency’s price.

Traders have been snapping up $10,000 and $15,000 calls expiring in March 2022 of late, with Goldman Sachs reportedly predicting an $8,000 ETH price before the year-end.

“Since mid-October, we have seen higher interest in year-end and March upside ETH exposure,” Deribit’s Institutional Newsletter for October said.

“Premiums for downward protection are getting cheaper. A drop in 3 or 6 Month Skew indicates that out-of-the-money calls are getting more expensive than the money puts. A similar effect can be seen in the volatility term structure where Dec and March IVs [implied volatilities] are elevated,” Deribit added.

SAND tops $3

Ethereum-based virtual reality platform The Sandbox’s SAND token tapped record highs above $3, taking the seven-day gain to over 300%. Other gaming tokens like enjoin coin, lluvium’s ILV token also traded higher.

“The growing investor attention on the potential of the metaverse, helped by Facebook’s announcement (SAND and MANA are much more direct ways to bet on metaverse growth than is an investment in Facebook stock),” Noelle Acheson, head of market insights Genesis Global Trading, said.

“Facebook’s recent decision to rebrand as Meta is powering metaverse, non-fungible tokens, and gaming tokens higher. AXS, ILV, WILD - all have hit life time highs, MANA, SAND, have tripled,” Dennis Hui, a DeFi portfolio manager at DAO Ventures, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

According to Anthony Vince, global head of trading at GSR, Sandbox’s latest closure of a $93 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank adds to bullish momentum around the cryptocurrency.

“This should help catapult their growth plans in the metaverse and NFT space, which is a focus of forward-thinking crypto investors at the moment,” Vince said.