By James Davis
Most coins have had exceptional rallies in January. The Polygon’s native token, MATIC, is not left out and is set to end the month strongly. The token saw 7-day gains of 18%, and as of Monday morning, it was trading at $1.17, according to data from CoinGecko.
Since the start of the year, MATIC has surged by 50% compared to Ethereum and Bitcoin, whose values have increased by 39% and 45%, respectively, during the same span. MATIC is currently the tenth-largest coin by market cap. Its market cap sits at $10.5 as of this writing.
How MATIC Whale Made Over $4 Million in Two Years
As MATIC continues to rally, a blockchain analyst (@Lookonchain) posted on his Twitter account revealing a wallet address that had made significant profits from the coin. According to Lookonchain, the whale bought about 4 million MATIC for $81,000 from the popular crypto Exchange Binance in 2020.
On Sunday, data from Etherscan shows that the MATIC whale exchanged their holdings for stablecoins worth $5.1 million. Although the transaction involved more MATIC than the amount which was initially bought from Binance, this trader still generated $4.4 million from the initial 4 million MATIC.
Despite the recent rally, MATIC’s current price is still far from its all-time high of $2.93 set in December 2021. According to CoinGecko, the coin is down by nearly 65% from its peak. If the MATIC whale opted to sell his holding at the Token’s highest price, the 4 million MATIC would have been worth $11.8 million.
Polygon Co-Founder Says ZkEVM Launch is on the Horizon
MATIC’s price increase comes at a time when Polygon is preparing to launch an upgrade that was initially announced last July. A few weeks ago, Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon co-founder, tweeted that the network’s zkEVM upgrade had an official launch date and would be revealed soon.
According to Polygon developers, zkEVM will be compatible with the current Ethereum smart contracts. Once updated, zkEVM will facilitate the verification of large lots of transactions more efficiently using a cryptographic method of zero-knowledge proofs.
When Polygon leadership revealed plans to launch zkEVM, the network’s co-founder Mihalo Bjelic claimed that the upgrade would put Ethereum in the same bracket as Visa, a global payments processor, in relation to how fast transactions could be completed.