Do Kwon, co-founder and chief executive officer of Terraform Labs, in the company’s office in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday, April 14, 2022. Kwon is counting on the oldest cryptocurrency as a backstop for his stablecoin, which some critics liken to a ginormous Ponzi scheme. Photographer: Woohae Cho/Bloomberg
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Crypto critics who believe that the industry is nothing more than a series of intricate ponzi schemes are puffing their chests today.
TerraUSD (UST), a digital token with a $16 billion market capitalization that is designed to maintain a 1:1 peg with the dollar, known as a stablecoin, nosedived over the past 24 hours. Its price fell below $.65, before somewhat recovering to $0.93 as of this writing. In other words, UST failed spectacularly at the one thing that it was supposed to do – maintain parity with the dollar.
The episode is reminiscent of when the Reserve Primary Fund, a money market mutual fund with $68 billion in assets fell from $1 per share net asset value to $0.97 during the financial crisis after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008. It owned Lehman commercial paper and the investment bank’s collapse caused a panic among money market fund holders who rushed to redeem shares. Money market funds were thought to be as safe as FDIC-insured savings accounts.
UST collapsed yesterday before mounting a slight recovery
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In terms of TerraUSD, the drop happened to fall on…
