Terra (LUNA), the in-house token of the blockchain protocol Terra, is undergoing major changes that are causing intrigue and frustration in equal measure.
Data released on May 13 confirms that overnight, the supply of the troubled cryptocurrency increased to 6.9 trillion Luna.
6,900,000,000,000 Luna, almost zero value
After a tumultuous week in which Terra tried to protect LUNA as well as the US dollar stablecoin, TeraUSD (UST), things went from bad to worse.
Despite the massive selloff of BTC and loans to propel the market, the value of both tokens has been steadily declining.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, at the time of writing, LUNA/USD traded at an almost imperceptible average of $0.00005474 at the time of writing.
Much to the dismay of those who were already expecting a prolonged stay at low levels, Luna could not halt its decline, and the latest measures by Terra have exacerbated the situation.
The increase in supply, which began in earnest on May 8, took a turn for the futile in recent days in a move reminiscent of hyper-inflationary fiat currencies.
On May 11, 1.8 billion luna were mined and 764 million were added to the existing supply. If that wasn’t enough, 185 billion more tokens appeared on May 12th.
Finally, on May 13, Terra mined 6.7 trillion Luna – an increase of 3,483% in one go.
Tear out pic.twitter.com/LXfx1ngu2A
— hodlonaut (@hodlonaut) 13 May 2022
Popular commentator Hodlonaut, creator of the bitcoin cultural resource Citadel21, replied during a May 12 print, “There is bitcoin, and there is shitcoin.”
After the total supply of LUNA reached 6.9 trillion, Hodlonaut drew a line under the existence of the altcoin.
Worse than OneCoin?
As spectacular as inflation is, the collapse of LUNA is garnering the most attention, as older market participants have compared the event to the demise of crypto Ponzi schemes such as Bitconnect and OneCoin.
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David Hoffman, co-founder of the crypto newsletter Bankless, laid out The LUNA implosion vs. Bitconnect scale with a comparative market cap chart.
Popular Trader MDXCrypto . “Luna is actually the largest cluster ever in crypto” Continuous,
“Worse than Bitconnect, worse than OneCoin, worse than Axi, worse than them all.”
As Cointelegraph recently reported, Terra promises to revive the entire ecosystem, yet completely shut down the LUNA blockchain hours later.
Arthur Hayes, former CEO of derivatives platform BitMEX, wrote, “Even if LUNA and UST survive this episode, there should be some genius protocol changes in the long run to solidify market confidence that LUNA is the only one.” The market cap of the UST will always be higher than the float.” In the first part of a series of blog posts on stablecoins titled “Luna Brothers, Inc.”. Released on 13th May:
“I don’t know how to get it done.”
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, LUNA/USD, pulled from major exchange Binance, is trading at $0.0077 on Bitfinex at the time of writing.
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