The rebranded token of the collapsed Terra ecosystem, recorded one of the biggest gains in the cryptocurrency market over the last 24-hour period, rising over 74% to $0.0000072 due to exploding trading volume. The token rose more than 160% last week.
The rally comes ahead of the Dec. 11 sentencing of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, who admitted to financial fraud charges in the United States and faces up to 12 years in prison. Traders appear to be speculating that a final verdict could bring clarity to a project long mired in legal uncertainty. On top of that, Do Kwon’s audience draws attention to the long-missing project.
At the same time, technical factors are attracting attention. Token burning, in which coins are permanently removed from circulation, has accelerated.
In the last week alone, 849 million LUNC were destroyed, and Binance contributed by burning half of the LUNC trading fees. The December pace has already exceeded 959 million tokens burned. According to a tracking dashboard, Binance has burned a total of 75.89 billion LUNC.
Although relatively small compared to the token’s circulating supply of 5.49 trillion, the burning activity has energized a community still hoping to revive the ecosystem after the 2022 crash that wiped out $40 billion in value.
To add momentum, Binance paused LUNC withdrawals ahead of the Terra Chain v2.18 update scheduled for December 8. The update aims to fix interoperability errors and improve network stability.
Still, the token remains volatile and outperforms the broader market. According to the performance of the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, it fell almost 2.3% during the same period.
