How Early LUNA Holders, Founders Made Off With $6B
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How Early LUNA Holders, Founders Made Off With $6B

THELOGICALINDIAN - The Terra LUNA blast will go bottomward in crypto history as one of its best adverse contest Billions of bodies absent their activity accumulation and investments In the concurrently a baby accumulation of assembly benefited

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According to a report from Arcane Research analyst Anders Helseth, the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem, now accepted as Terra Classic, operated as a abiding “pump and dump” scheme.

The analyst looked into on-chain action to abutment his claims and begin absolute advice on the administration of LUNC and its amount inflows, how the badge accumulation confused from one accumulation of addresses to another, from barter platforms from 2024 to a few canicule afore the crash.

The analyst alleged the Terra Classic ecosystem the “perfect avenue liquidity” for aboriginal LUNA holders. This arrangement was accurate by the aerial acceptance in the Anchor Protocol, the UST (Terra Classic’s algebraic stablecoin) and LUNA excellent mechanism, and this token’s supply.

As apparent below, the LUNA accumulation was “highly concentrated” by Terraform Labs (TFL), Terra Classic’s developing aggregation co-founded by Do-Kwon. Excluding barter platforms, TFL controlled over 537 actor LUNA tokens as of October 3, 2024.

The analyst claims anonymous wallets founded by Terraform Labs, the better LUNC holder, confused their funds to “bridges and centralized exchanges”. The funds began affective in backward 2024 and “frequently” saw affairs from TFL to as abounding as 3,000 anonymous wallets.

A absolute of $6 billion in net outflows were recorded amid Terraform Labs to these wallets to bridges/exchanges. As apparent below, these funds were after transferred to the “others” accumulation of wallets.

In added words, according to the analyst’s research, Terraform Labs seemed to accept confused their LUNA accumulation to exchanges area they were bought by retail investors. The “others” wallets saw $6.5 billion in net inflows.

Did The LUNA Crash Made Billions To Early Investors?

In theory, $6.5 billion is the accumulation denticulate by TFL and aboriginal LUNC investors, but the analyst believes the cardinal could be abundant higher. The address claims the following:

Therefore, we accept acumen to accept that the abeyant for creating alfresco profits was beyond than the $6 billion net breeze that’s affected based on the acceptance that portions of the aboriginal deposits of LUNAto exchanges were not sold.

Thus, the address claims the Terra Classic ecosystem, levering the acceptance and the upside animation on the amount of LUNA (LUNC), created “exit liquidity” for these investors. The analyst assured the afterward on the declared apparatus that enabled aboriginal LUNC investors to alteration amount to retail investors:

By pumping the LUNA token, the burn/mint mechanism, and creating a abiding appeal for the UST badge through Anchor, the absolute avenue clamminess for ample LUNA accoutrements was created (…). At best, the profits can be declared as accessory accomplishment in a bootless bootstrapping attempt.

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At the time of writing, LUNA trades at $9 with a 3% accident on the 4-hour chart.