TerraUSD (USTC) and LUNC, remnants of the collapsed Terra ecosystem rebranded as Terra Classic, recently saw a surge in trade volume and price.
In the past week, Terra Classic USD (USTC) surged as much as 300%, as reported. Earlier this week, LUNC gained up to 65% after Binance announced the listing of the LUNC/TRY trading pair, extending its rise until retracing.
Crypto research firm Kaiko reveals the real reason behind the massive surge in trade volumes and prices for Terra Classic tokens.
According to Kaiko, the activity was linked to Binance listing a highly leveraged USTC-USDT perpetual futures contract on Nov. 27 and Terra Classic Labs (TCL) investing $500 million in the USTC stablecoin.
The listing of USTC perpetual contracts accelerated buying and selling on Nov. 27, propelling the stablecoin’s daily trade volume to more than $1.3 billion.
Kaiko traces the origin of USTC's impressive rally to a series of large buy orders initiated on Nov. 23. It was noted that USTC buying kicked off on Nov. 23 with a series of large buy orders.
Prices began to rise two days later, prompting several large sell orders. Within a few days, the market share of trading volume increased from virtually zero to 6.5%.
As seen on the USTC trading chart, prices began rallying truly after Nov. 23, with USTC posting sharp price increases in the few days that followed.
LUNC also benefited from the positive sentiment, with its trading volume increasing by over 90% to $380 million since the beginning of November.
However, profit-taking set in after the enormous surge seen for both tokens. At the time of writing, Terra Classic (LUNC) was down 2.94% in the last 24 hours to $0.000202 but up 75% in the last seven days.
Terra Classic USD (USTC), formerly UST stablecoin, fell 1.28% in the last 24 hours to $0.045 and 11.84% in the last seven days.