Pantera Capital Sold 80% of LUNA Tokens Before Massive Crash!

Pantera Capital, one of Terraform Labs’ most prominent supporters, sold out over 80% of its Terra (LUNA) investment before the currency’s fall last week.

In a recent interview with The block, Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, told :

“The market has been fairly frothy over the last year and thus we’d exited the majority of our position before any of this happened,” “Roughly 80% over the last year, fairly gradually over time.”

Pantera Capital-backed Terraform Labs at least twice, first with a $25 million round in January 2021 and again with a $150 million ecosystem fund round in July 2021. Following the publication of the report, Krug noted that Pantera’s LUNA investments were distinct from its Terraform Labs investments and occurred in the summer of 2020, following LUNA’s initial public offering.

He said :

“We managed that position down over time as it became increasingly profitable/large, in order to maintain a diversified portfolio,”. “We initially invested in LUNA because of the progress we saw in developer adoption, the payments usage, and the broader ecosystem being built on Terra.”

Pantera made a huge profit since it liquidated the majority of its investment early. Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit told The Block that the business transformed $1.7 million into about $170 million.

Meanwhile, other Terraform-backed venture capital businesses are suffering losses as Terra’s native LUNA token has lost nearly all of its value owing to the UST crisis.

Pantera liquidated much of its LUNA assets from the remaining 20% stake after it learned of UST’s de-pegging the week before.

“We got out of 2/3 of that at an average price of $25.6,” said Krug. “The remainder of that was staked via LUNAX and so unable to be sold.” Stader Labs’ LunaX is a liquid staking token.

Is Anchor Protocol a Best Investment?

Veradittakit has encouraged people to invest in Anchor, a Terra-based decentralized banking network that, like UST, has lost virtually all of its client assets.

According to statistics from Defi Llama, Anchor’s total value locked (TVL) has dropped from over $16 billion before the UST meltdown to just over $150 million currently. The anchor was described by Veradittakit as a “savings account” with a high “fixed” interest rate.

“20% APY [annual percentage yield]. A fixed-income, low-risk financial instrument with returns as high as Anchor is truly incredible,” Veradittakit had said in a Medium blog post in April 2021.

Anchor gave UST depositors a 20% annual percentage yield. Anchor contributors recently advocated decreasing the APY to an average of 4% in order to make its yield reserves more viable due to the UST problem.

On Wednesday, around 7:30 a.m. ET, the fork suggestion went public. Over 84 million LUNA have voted in support, with over 9 million voting against at the time of writing. To pass, the vote requires 188 million LUNA in favor.  Pantera’s LUNA investments have been updated for transparency.