Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said that the Binance never moved or sold the 15.4 million LUNA it received in 2018 in exchange for a $3 million investment in the Terra ecosystem.
Binance’s governance token holdings on the Terra blockchain were once valued at $1.6 billion.
It currently has a value of $2,461 and remains in the wallet in which the platform received it.
‘Never moved or sold”
“Binance received 15,000,000 LUNA (at peak worth $1.6 billion, now not much) as part of the original ($3m) investment. 560x return at peak. It still sits on the address we received at (backhand index pointing down emoji),” CZ tweeted.
He also stressed in the same tweet that Binance never sold or moved it.
The wallet has 3.4 million LUNA, with the remainder staked.
In some news reports, a Binance spokesperson said that there is 12mm LUNA used for staking back in 2021.
“And that’s how this address gets UST rewards. Binance Labs had never invested in UST before,” the spokesperson added.
Binance staked 8 million LUNA with Orion. Money, which they used to pay out 12 million TerraUSD (UST), Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin. The businesses staked money and 4 million LUNA utilizing the Staked protocol. On July 1, 2021, both deals took place.
Paused twice
The Terra blockchain was twice paused to regroup and stymie the damage after a tumultuous week that started with UST losing its currency peg last Monday.
According to CoinMarketCap, the chain has restarted, and UST is now trading at $0.11, with a market cap of $1.4 million.
Do Kwon, the creator of Terra has been in the news for months when he started contributing Bitcoins worth millions of dollars to the UST reserve.
Prior to this, the stablecoin maintained its peg by an innovative mint-and-burn method in conjunction with the LUNA token. When UST went below $1, users could purchase the discounted UST, exchange it (burning the UST in the process) for $1 in LUNA, and then sell the LUNA for a little profit on the open market.