The old Terra LUNA price (now LUNC) made a +1,150% move within one four hour candle on May 11th, liquidating Korean company Uprise for $20M.
Uprise LUNA Short
Despite the strength of LUNA’s downtrend from around $65 on May 9th (hitting a low of 0.00000112 BUSD by May 12th on the Binance LUNA/BUSD pair while other crypto exchanges had already suspended LUNA trading) it did have volatile pumps before going to near zero.
One of those was its move from a low of $0.68 to $7.88 within the space of one 4h green candle – shown above on May 11th.
Within the same 4h candle and the following 4h candles LUNA quickly retraced all of that move, but few short positions opened during that time would have been able to fade an 11x price spike without being stopped out or liquidated.
Korean startup Uprise, which markets itself as a ‘robo-advisor’ and AI trading platform using an artificial intelligence to open leveraged long and short trades, didn’t time the market well. In a statement to local Seoul media Uprise stated:
‘Due to great unexpected volatility in the market, there has been damage to customer assets. We plan to finalize the report on our virtual asset business soon.’
The Uprise investment fund added they are planning some form of compensation for customers. The total assets lost are estimated at $20.4 million (26 billion Korean Won), both company capital and investor funds.
Uprise is backed by Korean venture capital funds Kakao Ventures and KB Investment, and has now suspended its trading service.
Risks of Trading LUNA
British Youtuber KSI also lost almost $3 million trading LUNA, although not with a short position – he made the decision to buy LUNA on the dip too early, hoping for a bounce. That came too late, as the LUNA price move from $0.68 to $7.88 wasn’t enough for him to exit at a profit.
Attempting to leverage trade low market cap altcoins – as LUNA had become by that point – during periods of extreme FUD, price volatility and black swan events, is high risk even for experienced traders and investment funds with trading robots.
Today as of July 7th Terra Classic (LUNC) is trading at a price of $0.00011 and the new hard forked LUNA coin at $2.12 (also crashing from over $10 since its launch on Crypto.com and other exchanges).
Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon is under investigation for fraud and other financial crimes in the both the US and South Korea. Do Kwon has denied he withdrew $2.7 billion of LUNA and algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) to private wallets prior to the May crash.
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