Crypto Market Recovers Amid UST and LUNA Collapse

Bitcoin is in the green Friday and back above $30,000 after dropping to a 2022-low, as investors analyze the bizarre fallout of TerraUSD (UST), a once prominent stablecoin. 

Bitcoin is currently being traded at $30,839, which is good for a 7.33% price increase in the last 24 hours. As MMCrypto, a Bitcoin enthusiast and verified account, put it on May 11 on Twitter, “price going down, while the value is going up makes me BULLISH!” 

Well now that price has followed the value, as least temporarily, leaving investors a little less panicked on their weekend eve. 

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum (Ether) made a bit of a bounce back, now valued at $2,128, good for a 5.62% increase in the last 24 hours. As it stands, Bitcoin and Ether are on pace for their worst week in 2022, down 15% and 22% respectively. 

Crypto markets have struggled all year amid the broader market turmoil and intense geopolitical issues. Bitcoin, which continues to be the kingpin of crypto, remains highly correlated with tech stocks, was up Friday mornings just like most of the major tech stocks. 

While Bitcoin, Ethereum and six more cryptocurrencies in the top 10 by market cap are up Friday morning, this week was extremely dire for the crypto community and especially the Terra community as Terra’s stablecoin, UST, lost its peg and nose dived along with Terra’s native token LUNA. 

UST, a stablecoin pegged to $1, lost it’s peg on May 9 and plunged to $0.71. On May 10 it seemed to recover about $0.05 slightly raising its value, before it took another massive dip going to $0.33. At the time of writing UST is valued at $0.1356, with very little hope of recovering its peg. 

Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen commented on the collapse as she called for regulation onc stablecoins by the end of the year when speaking at a May 10 Senate banking hearing. 

To make matters worse, Terra’s native token LUNA took a massive dive to $0.000077, which came only a month and a week after its all-time high at $116. This sent shockwaves through the crypto world. We have seen collapses like this happen to meme coins, but to a legitimate project is mind boggling. 

On May 3, UST and LUNa founder Do Kwon said in an interview “"95% [of coins] are going to die, but there's also entertainment in watching [them] die too." That surely didn’t age well for the South Korean native as he finds both of his coins in that very fate. 

Now people on social media are demanding that Kwon be locked up as he has jeopardized the lives of many people. Here are some of hundreds of tweets voicing their anger towards Kwon. 

This has even caused Kwon’s spouse to ask for police protection, according to Watch.Guru.

This week has been a wild time for crypto, but if Friday is any indication, things can start to trend in the right direction for investors. 

Author: Tyler Irvin

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