OMNI post nearly 50% loss after airdrop and exchange listing

Omni network (OMNI) lost nearly 50% of its value on Wednesday after investors dumped the token following its listing on top crypto exchanges. A potential reason for the crash may be due to the wider crypto market slump.

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OMNI underperforms after airdrop

Omni Network is a blockchain platform that aims to integrate Ethereum rollups.

Considering the restaking boom in DeFi protocols, OMNI airdrop participants and investors expected its price to skyrocket, similar to ENA and EtherFi. However, the platform, which aims to unite rollups, saw a massive decline in its OMNI token. As investors received the free OMNI tokens, many of the tokens were sold, possibly in a bid to collect liquidity.

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The impact of the sell-off may also be because OMNI listed on several exchanges—including Binance, ByBit, and Bitget—at the same time, its airdrop went live. OMNI went live with over 10,000 OMNI tokens and soon began trading for around $53.81 before crashing to $27.18 at the time of writing. OMNI's trading volume is about $580 million.

OMNI's crash also aligns with the poor performance of the airdrop of Solana-based real-world asset derivatives trading protocol Parcl (PRCL). Investors expected the coin to trade around $1.5 to $2.0, but it was largely disappointing as it couldn't cross the $0.70 mark before crashing.

Wormhole, which airdropped its X token, has also lost about $1.5 billion from its market cap since launch. One major reason for these airdrops' recent underperformance may be the wider crypto market slump following tension surrounding a potential Iran-Israel conflict.

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One crypto community member noted on X:

"People are down bad last few weeks. Makes sense they would take whatever liquidity they could get right now (...) In a fear based environment people insta dump airdrops."