The price of the digital token underlying Augur's ethereum-based prediction market has risen sharply in the past day, market data shows.

The REP token had seen steady gains earlier in the day, rising 13.13 percent during the morning trading session (between 06:01 UTC and 12:00 UTC) and over 52 percent during the subsequent six-hour afternoon session.

REP saw its price shoot as high as $204 in the past twenty-four hours on the Bittrex cryptocurrency exchange, according to available data. The average price as reported by CoinMarketCap rose above $107 – after starting below $50 a day before – and at press time, REP is trading at roughly $92.

It's not entirely clear why the token is seeing a sudden surge in price. The token – which serves as a financial incentive for users of the Augur prediction market – officially launched in October 2016, having previously been distributed in a token sale that netted the Augur team $5.3m in 2015. Augur entered its beta mode in March of last year.

Market data shows that, at the start of the month, REP was trading in the mid-$20 range, climbing above $30 on Dec. 3. The token's price passed the $40 level over the weekend, setting the stage for this week's rally.

For today's afternoon trading session between 12:01 UTC and 18:00 UTC, REP outperformed the other highest performers, which included IOTA (which rose by 18.95 percent during that time) and EOS (which climbed 16.3 percent). Prices for Golem and Factom increased by 14.77 percent and 9.66 percent, respectively.

Among the worst-performing cryptocurrencies during that session were Hshare (which dropped 4.74 percent), Qtum (down by 3.7%) and Populous (down by 2.97 percent).

Chart image via Shutterstock