Binance’s holdings amounted to $1.6 billion at their peak. After Terra’s collapse, this same investment now stands at $2,461.
Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO, stated Monday that the cryptocurrency exchange has never sold the 15.4million LUNA it received as a return for a $3million investment made within the Terra ecosystem.
Binance’s Terra blockchain governance token holdings were worth $1.6 billion at one time.
It’s now worth $2,461 and is still in its original wallet. Zhao tweeted that the transaction was “never sold or moved”
The wallet contains 3.4 million LUNA, and the rest has been staked.
“There are 12mm LUNA that can be used for staking back 2021,” a Binance spokesperson said Decrypt via email. “And that’s how this address receives UST rewards, Binance Labs has never invested in UST before.”
The TerraUSD (12 million) (UST), Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin was paid out in rewards from Orion.Money 8 million LUNA Binance staked with Orion.Money 4 million LUNA staked by the Staked protocol. Both transactions occurred on July 1, 2021.
After a chaotic week that started with UST losing its dollar peg Monday, Terra blockchain was halted twice in order to regroup and stymy all the damage.
According to CoinMarketCap at the time of writing, the chain is back up and UST is currently trading at $0.10 (or $1.4 million)
Terra is supported by Binance
Do Kwon, Terra founder, has been in the news for several months since he started buying millions of Bitcoin from the reserve backing UST.
The stablecoin was held steady by a unique mint and burn mechanism that was used in conjunction with the LUNA token. Users could purchase the discounted UST at a price of $1 and then trade it for $1 in LUNA. Then, they could flip the LUNA for a small profit.
Terra offered more than just a dollar pegged stablecoin. It also offered many other currencies around the world, including the euro and yen.
“And this is exactly what Terra is not just another stablecoin but a better payment system using a price stable digital currency to compliment both existing fiat currencies,” Binance stated in a 2019 post. “Retaining all the censorship resistance that Bitcoin has and making it feasible for everyday transactions.”
The crypto exchange was critical of how the team dealt with the situation after UST lost its 1:1 peg to the dollar last week.
Zhao posted on Twitter Friday that he was disappointed in the Terra team’s handling of the UST/LUNA issue. He said that the Terra team had not responded to the network’s suspension.
Later that day, Binance warned that it would have to delist UST-LUNA trading pairs. pulled them off its platform.
