Luna Foundation sells at least $2.1B worth of Bitcoin to support UST

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - Luna Foundation Guard, the organization behind the controversial stable coin TerraUSD, known as UST, sold at least $2.1 billion worth of Bitcoin in the past 10 days to support the price of UST, according to released figures.

The organization, which is the second largest known holder of Bitcoin in the world, said on Twitter on Monday that it held 80,394 Bitcoin in its reserve as of May 7, but it now holds only 313 Bitcoin as of Monday.

"Consistent with its non-profit mission & focus on the health of the Terra ecosystem, beginning on May 8, when the price of $UST began to drop substantially below one dollar, the Foundation began converting this reserve to $UST," it wrote on Twitter.

"The Foundation did so by directly executing on-chain swaps and transferring $BTC to a counterparty to enable them to enter trades with the Foundation in large size & on short notice," it added.

This means Luna Foundation Guard liquidated 80,081 Bitcoin from its reserve between May 8 and 16 when the price of Bitcoin was falling from $35,500 to see as low as $26,800 on May 12.

While it is unknown at what price the foundation liquidated its Bitcoin reserves, it is estimated to have sold at least $2.1 billion worth of Bitcoin at the lowest price, or approximately $2.8 billion if it sold them at the highest price.

Many crypto investors partially blame the organization for the price of Bitcoin plummeting last week, which had a massive impact on altcoins and the crypto market as a whole.

Despite the organization's efforts to support TerraUSD, the price of UST that was designed to be pegged one-to-one with the US dollar was down to $0.1254 at 1000 GMT on Tuesday.

Its sibling Luna was hovering around $0.0001916 at the time, losing almost all of its value from $99 a month ago.