Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform in terms of transactions, Binance apparently suffered heavy losses from the falling prices of the crypto assets Terra LUNA and TerraUSD.
In 2018, Binance injected US$3 million into Terra LUNA and received 15 million tokens in return. When Terra LUNA recorded the highest price in history, the investment reached US$1.6 billion or equivalent to Rp. 23.3 trillion (assuming Rp. 14,500/US$).
However, these benefits were not realized. Binance is not divesting or selling its Terra LUNA. At the current price, the investment is only worth US$2,391 or the equivalent of Rp. 34.67 million.
Despite suffering heavy losses, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao wants retail investors who lost their money due to the falling price of Terra LUNA to be reimbursed before Binance.
“To lead by setting an example in protecting consumers, Binance will let [investasi ini] and asked the LUNA project team to provide retail users first, Binance last, if necessary,” wrote Changpeng Zhao via his personal twitter account, quoted from Fortune, Tuesday (17/5/2022).
Binance has been a major backer of the company Terraform Labs, the company that created Terra LUNA and TerraUSD, for many years.
Through its investment division, Binance was the lead investor in the 2018 Terraform funding round which raised US$32 million. However, Terraform Labd and Binance’s relationship has not been very good lately.
Last week, Changpeng Zhao said he was “very disappointed” at how the team behind Terra LUNA and TerraUSD handled the two crypto assets’ slump. It was in response that when Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon said he wanted to fork Terra, or create a new blockchain and distribute millions of tokens in the new cryptocurrency to backers, Zhao was honest with his opinion.
“This is not going to work,” he said in a tweet.
In a separate tweet last Friday, Zhao said of the Terra team, “So far, we haven’t had a positive response, or much response at all.”
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