Kategorie: Crypto Markets

After Terra’s UST stablecoin meltdown, there seems to be a storm within the stablecoin space with a second stablecoin and one of the most popular stablecoin, Tether (USDT) also losing its dollar peg. Following the recent developments, Tether has announced via a tweet that it shall coordinate a chain swap to move its USDT assets from the Tron blockchain to Ethereum and Avalanche blockchains.

In the announcement, Tether says that it plans to move one billion USDT assets from Tron to Ethereum and 20 million USDT assets from Tron to Avalanche. This will however not affect the total supply of the USDT stablecoins.

In few minutes Tether will coordinate with a 3rd party to perform a chain swap, converting from Tron TRC20 to Ethereum ERC20, for 1B USDt and from Tron TRC20 to Avalanche, for 20M USDt. The #tether total supply will not change during this process.

— Tether (@Tether_to) May 12, 2022

The announcement has come at a time when there is heightened fear arising from the recent TerraUSD stablecoin meltdown that has taken Terra (LUNA) coin down with it. Today, the price of USDT has shown some price fluctuations that have caused the stablecoin to even slip below $0.99 on many crypto exchanges.

USDT is the most traded stablecoin and investors are worried when it starts showing signs of struggle.

USDT is not like algorithmic stablecoins such as UST

In an interview, Tether’s CTO, Paolo Ardoino assured traders that the USDT stablecoin is not similar to algorithmic stablecoins like UST. He said:

“Tether has a Strong, conservative, and liquid portfolio that consists of cash & cash equivalents.” This includes treasury bills, money market funds, and commercial paper holdings.

Tether’s portfolio includes treasury bills, commercial paper holdings, and money market funds.

Ardoino also pointed out that while some are scared of the current stables hiccup, some traders are utilizing the opportunity by for example purchasing USDT below $1 and exchanging it for above $1 on Bitfinex and Tether’s official website.

The post Tether to move over 1 billion USDT assets from Tron to Ethereum and Avalanche appeared first on Coin Journal.

LUNA has dropped more than 90% in the past 24 hours, while UST remains more than 54% off its dollar peg at $0.43.

Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon has outlined how the cryptocurrency platform plans to handle the de-pegging from the US dollar that has over the past few hit the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.

UST, an algorithmic stablecoin whose minting model is tied to the native LUNA token has continued to decouple from its dollar peg on Tuesday massively. At one point, the UST token stood at $0.25, off 75% from the peg.

On Tuesday, Do Kwon said a “rescue plan” was in consideration, a move that followed failed attempts to push up the peg using Bitcoin reserves.

On Wednesday, the Terraform Labs chief explained via a tweet thread what was being put in place after a brutal 72 hours for the stablecoin and LUNA.

“I understand the last 72 hours have been extremely tough on all of you – know that I am resolved to work with every one of you to weather this crisis, and we will build our way out of this. Together,” he tweeted.

Path forward for UST and LUNA

According to Kwon, there is a need to absorb UST supply that is looking to exit the ecosystem first before further measures help establish a path towards the peg. This, he notes, will likely continue to push pressure on LUNA, which is incidentally down over 90% at the time of writing.

“Before anything else, the only path forward will be to absorb the stablecoin supply that wants to exit before UST can start to repeg. There is no way around it,” he explained.

He noted that the Terraform Labs team has proposed “several remedial measures to aid the peg mechanism to absorb supply.”

Among these measures is the teams’ endorsement of a community proposal to increase minting capacity from $293 million to $1200 million. With more LUNA minted, UST absorption will happen faster and help the recovery plan.

He, however, added that these measures come at a cost for holders of the Terra tokens.

“Naturally, this is at a high cost to UST and LUNA holders, but we will continue to explore various options to bring in more exogenous capital to the ecosystem & reduce supply overhang on UST,” he wrote.

Kwon has also hinted at a redesigning of the UST stablecoin, with future plans being to make it collateralized.

LUNA down 92%

On 11 May the UST token traded as low as $0.25, de-pegging the dollar by 75%. A brief relief in the crypto market had the stablecoin up to $0.50, but pressure has it back to $0.43 and more than 54% off the dollar peg.

LUNA was down an astonishing 92% in the past 24 hours at the time of writing. According to data from CoinGecko, the LUNA/USD pair was trading around $2.20 as a panicked community continues to wonder what next.

The post Terra CEO Do Kwon announces UST ‘rescue plan”, LUNA down 92% appeared first on Coin Journal.

The prices of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs have been on a downtrend for the last six consecutive days as the wider crypto market crash turns into a catastrophe

The crypto market crash does not only have a direct impact on the crypto industry but also on all other attributes including NFTs.  The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market including the BAYC NFTs, one of the largest and most popular NFT collections, has been largely affected.

BAYC has been among the top NFT performers and its popularity has even rivaled that of popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in the past few weeks. However, due to the current crypto market slump, the prices of the BAYC NFTs prices is also nosediving in tandem with the wider price drops within the larger crypto market.

Bored Ape Yacht Club performance 

Although both BAYC NFTs and BTC are nosediving, BAYC NFTs are definitely performing far worse than BTC and Ethereum (ETH). Over the past six days, the NFTs have dropped by about 29% while BTC is down 15.8%, and ETH is down 13%.

Other major and popular NFTs have also been affected and are experiencing massive price drops, like JPG NFT Index price which has also seen a massive drop of 26% over the last 6 days.

Other NFT collections that have also been nosediving include the Otherdeed NFT and Moonbirds NFT which were down by 23% and 19% respectively. However, the NFT market is expected to get back to its bullish trend under one condition, and that is if the crypto market recovers from its current crash. 

The post BAYC NFTs prices fall for 6 consecutive days as crypto market crash turns into a crisis appeared first on Coin Journal.

After weeks of hyping due to the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin release, the LUNA token has been forced to bite a humble pie after the same stablecoin de-pegged from the US dollar causing its price to drop massively. 

The price of LUNA, the native token of Terra has dropped by over 95% over the last five days with the bulk of the drop being registered today where it had fallen by about 86% at the time of writing.

In one week, LUNA has dropped from trading above $80 to its current price of $4.89 at the time of writing.

LUNA and the UST

Some analysts say that there is a possibility that there were no funds in the Terra project to support the UST and maintain its Dollar peg.

However, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), the organization that ensures UST maintains its $1 peg, has been putting a lot of effort into ensuring that there are no more losses and returning the UST peg to the Dollar.

Besides, Terra’s stablecoin reserve emptied its Bitcoin reserve by deploying $1.5 billion worth of BTC to support the UST and also defend the peg by adding the required liquidity to the ecosystems. The foundation also started to loan out coins to other trading firms and also 750 million UST tokens to accumulate BTC all aimed at defending the peg.

On May 5, the foundation had a total of 167,081 BTC ($3.5 billion) when it announced that it has added 37,863 coins more. However, the market effects did not seem to bother Do Kwon, Terra funder, he tweeted “Deploying more capital – Steady lads.”

Deploying more capital – steady lads

— Do Kwon 🌕 (@stablekwon) May 9, 2022

However, after Kwon’s tweet, the foundation moved 42,500 coins to different crypto exchange platforms like OKX, but since then Kwon has not said a word.

How UST and LUNA work

UST and LUNA work together to maintain the $1 price using game theory and blockchain-based burn and mint mechanics. These mechanics acts as a shock absorber for UST price volatility by ensuring that traders can swap a $1 worth of UST for $1 worth of LUNA.

Although there were speculations on the future of LUNA, Today’s Doji candlestick showed that although bulls are buying at lower levels the bears are equally defending the lower levels, therefore, the selling and buying pressure are canceling out.

The post The price of LUNA falls massively after the UST de-pegged from the US Dollar appeared first on Coin Journal.

The crypto market as a whole continues to suffer with most top 100 coins in the red at the time of writing. 

Top cryptos

Bitcoin lost around 5% in the last 24 hours, trading below $31,000. Ethereum and XRP suffered similar losses. The second biggest crypto is changing hands for just over $2,200. The biggest top 10 loser is Solana with a drop of 12%. 

Cryptos outside the top 10 did not do much better. Avalanche has shed over a quarter of its value so far today with further pain expected. Terra’s stablecoin UST, which lost its currency peg, is down 67%, trading for 30 cents per UST. 

Another big loser is NEAR, down 22% today and 33% this week. 

Top movers

Outside the top 20, the tendency was similar, with most coins losing 7-12% of their value. 

Notable victims of the severe market downturn include Algorand (-22%), Cosmos (-17%), Monero (-18%), ApeCoin (-21%), THORChain (-23%), Axie Infinity (-24%), Fantom and WAVES (each -20%), and the promising STEPN’s GMT (-27%).

Terra’s LUNA is in freefall, down 86% today and ranking 38^th. Since the crisis with its stablecoin started, LUNA has lost 95% of its value.                

At the time of publication, the only cryptocurrency in the green was UNUS SED LEO, which has added 6% to its value. This cryptocurrency allows Bitfinex users to save money on trading fees. 

The extent of the discount depends on how much LEO the customer has in their account. LEO is at #22 and seems poised to break the top 20 soon.  

Trending

The biggest winner today is 1SAFU, a platform on Solana where users will be able to send and receive messages, SOL, and NFTs as a single transaction.

To sign up and use the service, one would only need a supported SOL wallet. 1SAFU holders are rewarded generously based on a tiered system. Its token SAFU is up 843% today.  

The post Highlights May 11: Bitcoin loses over 20% in a week, LEO only gainer appeared first on Coin Journal.