South Koreans are laboriously purchasing Terra’s native token undeterred by the massive crash last week. Notably, several retail investors believe that LUNA, formerly among the top 10 crypto assets, would stage an incredible recovery.
Speculators Hopeful For A Comeback
LUNA, the native Terra blockchain token, showed promise at the start of the year, defying a general crypto downtrend and even forming a new all-time high just over a month ago at $119, while other major coins were testing lows. However, these milestones were short-lived as everything came crashing down last week, with the asset losing 99.99% of its value, currently trading at $0.0001334.
With Terra’s (LUNA) price so low, South Korean crypto speculators have been buying up the coin aggressively in the last couple of days, reckoning there is little to lose while not giving up hope for a comeback. On Thursday, a Reuters report revealed that the number of LUNA holders in the Asian country ballooned by over 50% on major local exchanges in 48 hours.
A hopeful South Korean blogger who reportedly purchased 300,000 LUNA over the weekend wrote, “Luna was once a major coin of top-ten market capitalization, so they will do whatever it takes to revive it.” Meanwhile, the buying pressure has done nothing to raise the crypto asset’s price, which keeps tanking, currently down 23% in the last 24 hours.
After the ecosystem crash, south Korean developer and Terra co-founder Do Kwon has revealed plans to compensate holders of TerraUSD (UST) – the algorithmic stablecoin whose collapse led to the LUNA devaluation – while proposing plans to rebuild the Terra network. However, Kwon’s most recent plan to create a new chain from the old one has faced stiff resistance from the community.
One of the biggest drivers of the LUNA devaluation was the excess LUNA minted in response to the UST de-pegging. As a result, instead of a Terra blockchain fork, a large portion of crypto Twitter and possible investors are calling for a supply burn.
Regulators Worried Over Continued LUNA Purchases
Following the sudden increase in LUNA purchases, the South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) has warned against LUNA purchases. Regulators remain concerned about the tendency of young South Koreans to purchase the asset despite continued price drops and the lack of a clear Terra revival plan.
It is worth noting that at the moment, things are not looking up for Do Kwon, as reports are springing up of possible lawsuits against the developer. Meanwhile, as reported by ZyCrypto on Wednesday, Terraform Labs has seen a mass exodus from its legal team.
In the meantime, several mainstream crypto exchanges in South Korea are preparing to suspend support for the asset. Bithumb and Upbit, two of South Korea’s major exchanges, have announced that they would suspend trading support for Luna on May 27 and May 20, respectively, while Coinone has banned deposits in the cryptocurrency ahead of a likely de-listing on May 25.
