Summary:
- Earlier this month, the Luna Foundation Guard drained its 80k Bitcoin reserves to save UST’s peg.
- According to Glassnode, the Bitcoin sold to save UST’s peg likely ended up being bought by small-time BTC whales owning less than 100 coins.
- The Luna Foundation Guard now holds 313 Bitcoin, down from 80,394 BTC declared on May 7th, 2022.
According to an analysis by the team at Glassnode, the Luna Foundation Guard’s (LFG) 80k Bitcoin sold in an attempt to save UST’s peg likely ended up being bought by small BTC whales holding less than 100 coins. The Glassnode team shared their insights into the fate of the LFG’s 80k Bitcoin reserves through the following statement and accompanying chart.
During the $LUNA triggered sell-off in early May, a total of 80,081 $BTC were liquidated by the Luna Foundation Guard.
Interestingly, the volume of supply held by entities < 100 $BTC has since increased by 80,724 $BTC.
This shows a transfer from LFG, to <100 $BTC holders.
The Luna Foundation Guard Now Left with 313 Bitcoin
As to the flow of the LFG’s Bitcoin during its attempt to save UST’s peg, a report by the team at Elliptic.com concluded that the transfers of Bitcoin started on the morning of May 9th when 22,189 BTC was sent to a new address. Later on, the LFG sent another 30k Bitcoin to the same address, and within hours, a total of 52,189 BTC had been sent to the Gemini exchange. The following day, 28,295 BTC was sent to Binance.
In a May 16th Tweet, the LFG broke down how its BTC reserves were sold to save UST’s peg. Their explanation kicked off with the declaration that it held 80,394 Bitcoin as of May 7th, 2022.
1/ As of Saturday, May 7, 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard held a reserve consisting of the following assets:
· 80,394 $BTC
· 39,914 $BNB
· 26,281,671 $USDT
· 23,555,590 $USDC
· 1,973,554 $AVAX
· 697,344 $UST
· 1,691,261 $LUNA— LFG | Luna Foundation Guard (@LFG_org) May 16, 2022
As UST lost its peg, the LFG started selling its Bitcoin to convert it into UST. It explained:
…when the price of $UST began to drop substantially below one dollar, the Foundation began converting this reserve to $UST.
The Foundation did so by directly executing on-chain swaps and transferring $BTC to a counterparty to enable them to enter trades with the Foundation in large size & on short notice.
During the process, the LFG transferred the earlier mentioned ‘52,189 Bitcoin to trade with a counterparty, net of an excess of 5,313 BTC that was returned, for an aggregate 1,515,689,462 UST.’ Another 33,206 Bitcoin was sold for an aggregate of 1,164,018,521 UST.
The team at the Luna Foundation Guard concluded their report on the fate of its Bitcoin reserves by providing the following update of its holdings as of May 16th.
- 313 Bitcoin
- 39,914 Binance Coin
- 1,973,554 Avalanche (AVAX)
- 1,847,079,725 UST
- 222,713,007 LUNA (of which 221,021,746 is currently staked with validators)
