Terra (LUNA) price slid on April 11 as a broader correction across crypto assets added to the uncertainties concerning its token burning mechanism.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) led to a decline in the rest of the cryptocurrency market, with LUNA's price dropping by over 8% to nearly $91.50, and about 30% from its record high of $120, set on April 6.
The overall drop tailed similar moves in the U.S. stock market after the Federal Reserve last week signaled its intentions to raise interest rates and shrink balance sheets sharply to curb rising inflation.
Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX exchange, said Monday that Bitcoin's correlation with tech stocks could have it run for $30,000 next. In other words, LUNA's high correlation with BTC so far this year puts it at risk of more downside if BTC doesn't rebound.
LUNA picked additional downside cues from at least two "exposé" threads that went viral on Twitter over the weekend.
The first thread, penned by a pseudonymous analyst @DeFi_Made_Here on April 7, questioned LUNA's capability to maintain the peg of Terra's native stablecoin, TerraUSD (UST) since it is not itself backed by any tangible asset.
The second thread, published on April 9 by Jack Niewold, an analyst at the Crypto Pragmatist — a DeFi newsletter, accused Terra co-founder Do Kwon of receiving all the LUNA tokens meant to be "burned" to mint UST.
He also alleged that the Luna Foundation Guard, a nonprofit organization that backs the Terra ecosystem, has been using a percentage of burned LUNA supply to buy Bitcoin.
Kwon refuted the claims in a tweet-to-tweet response to Niewold, calling him a "made up clickbait." The self-proclaimed "master of stablecoin" asserted that Terra burns LUNA 1:1 to mint new UST, which
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