the repurposed token from the collapsed Terra ecosystem, posted one of the biggest gains in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, rising more than 74% to $0.0000072 on exploding trading volume. The token has risen more than 160% in the past week.
The rally comes ahead of the Dec. 11 sentencing of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, who has pleaded guilty to financial fraud charges in the United States and faces up to 12 years in prison. Traders appear to speculate that a final ruling could bring clarity to a project long mired in legal uncertainty. On top of that, Do Kwon’s hearing brings attention that the project has long missed.
At the same time, technical factors drive attention. Token burns, where coins are permanently removed from circulation, have gained momentum.
In the past week alone, 849 million LUNC were destroyed, with Binance contributing by burning half of the fees from LUNC trades. December’s pace has already passed 959 million burned tokens. According to a tracking dashboard, a total of 75.89 billion LUNC have now been burned by Binance.
Although relatively small compared to the token’s circulating supply of 5.49 trillion, the burning activity has sparked a community still hoping to revive the ecosystem after the 2022 collapse that wiped out $40 billion in value.
To add momentum, Binance paused LUNC withdrawals ahead of Terra Chain’s v2.18 upgrade scheduled for December 8th. The upgrade aims to fix interoperability bugs and improve network stability.
Still, the token remains volatile while outperforming the broader market. Based on the performance of the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, it fell by almost 2.3% during the same period.
