Terra (LUNA), the internal token of the Terra blockchain protocol, is undergoing major changes that cause intrigue and despair in equal measure.
The data published on May 13 confirm that, overnight, the supply of the beleaguered cryptocurrency expanded to a staggering 6.9 trillion LUNA.
There are 6,900,000,000,000 LUNA tokens in circulation, but their value is almost zero
After a tumultuous week in which Terra attempted to rescue LUNA along with its failed US dollar stablecoin, TerraUSD (UST), things have gone from bad to worse.
Despite huge BTC sales and loans to prop up the market, both tokens have continued to lose value.
At the time of writing this article, the LUNA/USD pair was trading at an almost imperceptible average of $0.00005474, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
To the dismay of those hoping to go long at already low levels, LUNA was unable to stop her fall, and Terra’s latest measures seem to have aggravated the situation.
Supply increases, which began in earnest on May 8, have taken a worrying turn in recent daysbecause it is a movement reminiscent of hyperinflationary fiat currencies.
On May 11, 1.8 billion LUNA were minted, adding to the existing 764 million. As if that were not enough, on May 12, 185,000 million more tokens appeared.
Finally, on May 13, Terra minted 6.7 trillion LUNA, an increase of 3,483% in one go.
R.I.P. pic.twitter.com/LXfx1ngu2A
— hodlonaut ⚡ (@hodlonaut) May 13, 2022
RIP
“There’s bitcoin and there’s shitcoins,” replied popular commenter Hodlonaut, creator of the Bitcoin Citadel21 cultural resource, during the May 12 print.
After the total supply of LUNA reached 6.9 billion, Hodlonaut passed from the existence of the altcoin.
Worse than OneCoin?
Despite the spectacular inflation, LUNA’s collapse is drawing the most attention, with older market participants comparing the events to the demise of cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes like BitConnect and OneCoin.
David Hoffmann, co-founder of the Bankless cryptocurrency newsletter, exposed the scale of the implosion of LUNA vs. BitConnect with a comparative chart of market capitalization.
“LUNA is really the biggest cluster I have ever seen in the crypto space,” continuous the popular MDXCrypto trader:
“Worse than Bitconnect, worse than Onecoin, worse than Axie, worse than all of them.”
As Cointelegraph recently reported, Terra has vowed to revive the entire ecosystem, however hours later it shut down the LUNA blockchain entirely.
“Even if LUNA and UST survive this episode, in the long run some protocol changes need to be made to bolster market confidence that LUNA market capitulation will always outperform UST circulation,” wrote Arthur Hayes.former CEO of derivatives platform BitMEX, in the first of a series of blog posts on stablecoins, titled “Luna Brothers, Inc.”, published on May 13:
“I have no idea how to do it.”
The LUNA/USD pair, having been pulled from the major exchange Binance, was trading at $0.0077 on Bitfinex at the time of writing.according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, so you should do your own research when making a decision.
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