AUDIO Market Cap Surges Past $1B After TikTok-Audius Partnership News

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17 August 2021

Prices for AUDIO, the governance token of decentralized music streaming protocol Audius, nearly doubled in the past 24 hours, pushing its market capitalization above $1 billion for the first time.

The price surge comes after Audius announced its partnership with popular video-sharing app TikTok.

At press time, AUDIO was changing hands at $3.10, up 86% in the past 24 hours, according to Messari.

Data from TradingView and FTX shows that AUDIO’s price started pumping around 16:00 UTC on Aug. 16 and reached a high at $4.04 at approximately 6:00 UTC on Aug. 17. News of the TikTok tie-up first emerged at 15:00 UTC on Aug. 16.

AUDIO/USD pair on FTX
Source: TradingView, FTX

As CoinDesk reported, TikTok chose Audius to power its new “TikTok Sounds” library, the first of its kind for TikTok, with an aim to streamline the app’s music upload and selection process.

As the governance token of Audius, AUDIO is staked by users to secure the platform. In return, users receive a share of network fees, governance voting power as well as some value-added services like their favorite artists’ tokens and badges, according to Audius’ website.

While the token lives on the Ethereum blockchain, parts of the Audius platform run on the Solana blockchain.

The instant price pump also pushed the total market capitalization of AUDIO above $1 billion for the first time, according to CoinGecko, making it one of the 90 cryptocurrencies worth at least $1 billion. Its current market cap sits at $1.23 billion.

Audius, known as the “decentralized Spotify,” was founded in 2018 and is one of the largest decentralized consumer blockchain applications by monthly users.

AUDIO trading is mostly concentrated on centralized exchange Binance, according to CoinGecko. The exchange provides multiple AUDIO trading pairs including AUDIO/USDT, AUDIO/BUSD and AUDIO/BTC. The token is also available on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap.

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