The Terra saga continues. In a Twitter thread, the team behind the failed algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and the token LUNA shared precisely how much Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto assets they had disposed of. The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) also promised to “compensate remaining users of $UST, smallest holders first,” with the remaining assets. In summary, 80,081 BTC, or 99.61% of the Bitcoin that LFG guarded, has exited the fund. The group confirmed the sale of “33,206 $BTC for an aggregate 1,164,018,521 $UST” in a tweet. The remaining 47,188 BTC is not accounted for, while 313 BTC remains in reserve. …
United Kingdom’s Department of Treasury, or Her Majesty's Treasury, has reportedly decided to go ahead with legalizing stablecoins as a form of payment. While welcomed by the crypto community, the decision comes as a shocker due to its proximity to the recent fall of the popular algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD (UST). A local report from The Telegraph highlighted the Treasury’s intent to regulate stablecoins across Britain, which was revealed during the Queen’s Speech. During the speech, Prince Charles announced the introductions of new legislation across various sectors, including measures to drive economic growth to improve living standards in the region, adding: …
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin thinks that the beleaguered Terra project should prioritize small hodlers as part of any proposed reimbursement plan. As widely reported, the Terra eco-system suffered a death spiral around May 9 that resulted in LUNA tanking 100% and the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin losing its United States dollar peg, priced at $0.16 at time of writing. With LUNA and UST investors reeling from substantial losses, the community is now looking at ways to reestablish the ecosystem and potentially offer relief to the many people who got burned financially. One such community proposal — assuming the UST dollar peg …
The cryptocurrency market has lost $1.9 trillion six months after it soared to a record high. Interestingly, these losses are bigger than those witnessed during the 2007 subprime mortgage market crisis — around $1.3 trillion, which has prompted fears that creaking crypto market risk will spill over across traditional markets, hurting stocks and bonds alike. Stablecoins not very stable A massive move lower from $69,000 in November 2021 to around $24,300 in May 2022 in Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has caused a selloff frenzy across the crypto market. Unfortunately, the bearish sentiment has not even spared stablecoins, so-called crypto equivalents of …
Terra’s meltdown forced cryptocurrency investors to ask a question they never thought was possible: Will TerraUSD (UST) or Terra (LUNA) reach $1.00 first? The magnitude of this question provides a sobering reminder of just how quickly things can change in crypto. While Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon remains defiant, many people in the industry are beginning to distance themselves from the protocol they thought was delivering real-world utility for stablecoins and Bitcoin (BTC). The threat of contagion from Terra’s apparent collapse could take months or even years to fully quantify, but it looks like the howls of crypto winter are …
Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon has tabled a proposal to preserve the Terra ecosystem following the historic depegging of its algorithmic stablecoin, UST, and the resulting death spiral that plunged Terra (LUNA) tokens to practically zero. In a Friday post on Terra’s research forum, Kwon said, “The Terra community must reconstitute the chain to preserve the community and the developer ecosystem.” His proposal, which was in response to validator groups discussing the possibility of forking the Terra chain, involves compensating UST and LUNA holders who were unable or unwilling to sell their holdings during this week’s price collapse. Kwon proposed …
The past week has been a dark period in the history of crypto, with the total market capitalization of this industry dipping as low as $1.2 trillion for the first time since July 2021. The turmoil, in large part, has been due to the real-time disintegration of Terra, a Cosmos-based protocol that powers a suite of algorithmic stablecoins. Approximately a week ago, LUNA ranked among the 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies in the market, with a single token trading at a price point of $85. By May 11, however, the price of the asset had dropped to $15. And, 48-hours on, …
GAM Investments has quashed fake news reports that surfaced on Friday that claimed the Swiss asset manager would invest some $3 billion to aid in the recovery of the Terra ecosystem, including LUNA and the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin. An announcement published on Thursday claimed that the firm was engaging in talks with Terraform Labs to assist in recovery attempts after Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin, UST, lost its U.S. dollar peg, causing a cataclysmic crash of the acclaimed blockchain protocol, which had become a darling of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Cointelegraph has confirmed with GAM Investments that the press release was …
Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance has suspended trading pairs with Terra (LUNA) ecosystem's cryptocurrencies, LUNA and TerraUSD (UST), on its platform following the major crash of the algorithmic stablecoin. Binance confirmed the move on May 13, with spot trading for LUNA/BUSD and UST/BUSD trading pairs being suspended. It's not clear when the withdrawals for LUNA and UST will continue, as the crypto exchange simply stated that it will wait for the issues with the Terra network to be solved. It is the latest move by the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume following one of the most significant black swan …
In light of recent market effects due to the collapse of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, several questions should be answered about what makes a stablecoin usable as the crypto market expands. Co-founder of crypto financial service provider VegaX Holdings Sang Lee favors decentralized stablecoins over their centralized counterparts but thinks they must be coins that people can trust, which poses a dilemma for the industry. In a conversation with Cointelegraph on Friday, Lee pointed out that the important utility stablecoins serve in the crypto ecosystem was offering traders a uniform unit of account, like the United States dollar does for …
Commissioner Hester Peirce — also known as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) “crypto mom” — has backed a regulatory framework for stablecoins that allows “room for there to be failure.” Speaking at an online panel on Thursday hosted by financial think-tank the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), Peirce, who has long been an advocate for crypto, was asked to shed light on the actions being taken by U.S. regulatory bodies in regard to cryptocurrency. “One place we might see some movement is around stablecoins,” Peirce answered, “that’s an area that has gotten a lot of …
According to United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the stablecoin market is not at the scale at which the drop in the price of TerraUSD (UST) and Tether (USDT) below $1 would present a threat to the country’s financial stability. In a Thursday hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s Annual Report to Congress, Yellen hinted that the stablecoin market was not yet at a size in which UST dropping to under $0.40 and USDT — the largest stablecoin by market capitalization — briefly depegging from the dollar to hit $0.96 would create a …