Taiwan-based VR headset manufacturer HTC, considered to be a Metaverse-proxy stock because the company’s Vive headsets are an essential tool for the VR-based vision of the metaverse, seemed spared by Meta’s decline as the stock posted a 5% gain by mid-day Monday as the markets in Taipei re-opened after the Lunar New Year.

HTC’s Taipei-listed stock gained 5% to NTD 67 by mid-day through the local trading day.Last week Meta, formerly known as Facebook, posted a $10 billion loss on its augmented and virtual reality division. This wiped over $200 billion from the company’s market cap as the stock subsequently plummeted over 25% — its largest single-day decline yet.This also had a cascading effect on Metaverse tokens. According to a prior report from CoinDesk, Axie Infinity (AXS), The Sandbox (SAND), and Gala (GALA) fell as much as 12% in the 24 hour period after Meta’s earnings.But since then investor sentiment on these tokens has changed. AXS is up 13% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, Decentraland’s MANA up 8%, and GALA is posting a 7.5% gain.According to on-chain data, approximately $4.3 million in short positions on MANA have been liquidated during the last 24 hours. AXS had $2.6 million in short liquidations during the same time period, and $1.5 million in long liquidations.Despite the newfound interest in its VR headsets, HTC isn’t profitable. The company has faced fierce competition from other Android handset makers, pushing its phones down to a sub-1% market share — too low to be counted by most market research firms.HTC first saw its stock rally around the Metaverse in mid-October, around the time Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta. From mid-October to year-end, the stock posted gains of approximately 140%.The company has been called Taiwan’s version of GameStop. Its VR headsets have been around since 2015, and while sales are increasing their annual volume is still moderate.However, on PTT, Taiwan’s version of Reddit, references to the company’s name and ticker have spiked as many believe that without the Vive VR headset, the metaverse’s true vision is impossible to achieve.