RIP LUNA: Stablecoin Dies Less Than a Week After TerraUSD Depegs

It’s actually happened: LUNA has met its demise. Despite being worth upwards of $80 last week, the cryptocurrency now has a value of less than US$0.00001.

LUNA has been on a death spiral throughout the week, triggered by its sister stablecoin TerraUSD depegging from the US dollar on Saturday. At the time of writing, TerraUSD is worth US$0.19.

Read more: TerraUSD Just Depegged and Everyone’s Panicking – Should You Be Concerned?

The depegging caused investors to dump LUNA, plunging it to zero in under a week. On Thursday, Binance said the Terra network is “experiencing slowness and congestion, which is intermittently causing a high volume of pending Terra network withdrawal transactions” indicating a rush to sell LUNA.

The exchange was forced to temporarily suspend withdrawals of LUNA for a few hours due to the congestion.

Binance has since tweeted that deposits and withdrawals on Terra Network $LUNA have bene “temporarily suspended.”

Theories of institutional involvement also plauged social media, with some pointing the finger towards BlackRock and Citadel for heavily shorting the coin. Both financial giants denied the allegations.

Read more: LUNA Craters to US$0.12 as BlackRock, Citadel Deny Shorting Involvement

All eyes are now on founder Do Kwon, who has dismally failed to revive the cryptocurrency over the week.

The world hasn’t heard from Do Kwon since Wednesday when he tweeted a thread attempting to reassure LUNA holders.

“Terra’s focus has always oriented itself around a long-term time horizon, and another setback this May, similar to last year, will not deter the #LUNAtics,” he tweeted.

“Short-term stumbles do not define what you can accomplish. It’s how you respond that matters. Terra’s return to form will be a sight to behold. We’re here to stay. And we’re gonna keep making noise.”

A video of Kwon from just 8 days ago has since re-surfaced online in which he said “95% are going to die [coins], but there’s also entertainment in watching companies die too.”

However, with LUNA in its grave, other cryptocurrencies have strengthened in what had been an incredibly bearish market. BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP are up 7.75%, 5.71%, 20.45%, 15.88% over the past 24 hours respectively.