Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said Monday that the cryptocurrency exchange never sold the 15.4 million LUNA it received in return for a $3 million investment made in the Terra ecosystem in 2018.
Binance’s holdings in the Terra blockchain’s governance token were at one point worth $1.6 billion.
Now it’s worth just $2,461, and still sitting in the wallet that it was sent to—”never moved or sold,” Zhao wrote in a tweet.
2/ Binance received 15,000,000 LUNA (at peak worth $1.6 billion USD, now not much) as part of the original ($3m) invest. 560x return at peak. It still sits on the address we received at 👇. Never moved or sold.
Address:https://t.co/6HwTu6CCuB
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) May 16, 2022
The wallet holds 3.4 million LUNA and has staked the rest.
“There is 12mm LUNA used for staking back in 2021,” a Binance spokesperson told Decrypt in an email, “and that’s how this address gets UST rewards, Binance Labs had never invested in UST before.”
The 12 million TerraUSD (UST), Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin, was paid out as rewards from 8 million LUNA that Binance staked with Orion.Money and 4 million LUNA the firms staked with the Staked protocol. Both transactions took place on July 1, 2021.
After a raucous week that began with UST losing its dollar peg last Monday, the Terra blockchain was halted twice to regroup and stymy the damage.
At the time of writing, the chain has resumed and UST is trading at $0.10, according to CoinMarketCap, and the UST is worth $1.4 million.
Terra founder Do Kwon has also been…
