Terra USD (UST), the Terra blockchain’s algorithmic stablecoin, has flipped Binance USD (BUSD) to become the third-largest stablecoin on the market. UST is a United States dollar-pegged stablecoin that was launched in September 2020. Its minting mechanism requires a user to burn a reserve asset such as Terra (LUNA) to mint an equivalent amount of UST.
It has been reported that UST’s total market capitalization has surged 15% over the past 30 days to sit at around $17.5 billion, as of April 17. The figure currently places UST as the third-largest stablecoin after it flipped BUSD with a slightly lower market cap of $17.46 billion.
However, the asset is now trailing only behind industry giants Tether (USDT) at $82.8 billion, and USD Coin (USDC) at $50 billion. The gap is quite substantial at this stage. The data also shows that UST has been on a meteoric pump since mid-November, with the market cap increasing by 525% since then.
The report said that despite flipping BUSD in terms of market cap, UST is trading in volumes well below its immediate competitor, with Binance’s stablecoin seeing $2.26 billion worth of trading volume over the past few days compared to UST’s $431.79 million.
Likewise, Terra has been grabbing the headlines of late, partly due to co-founder Do Kwon, who recently vowed that the project will accrue a whopping $10 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to back its UST reserves.
Thus, much like the wider crypto market of late, however, bullish announcements are doing little to push the price of LUNA upwards. The token’s price is down 12.4% over the past 32 days to sit at $77.31, while it is also down 34.4% since its brief all-time high of $119.18 on April 5.
Source: Cointelegraph
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