the renowned token from the collapsed Terra ecosystem, posted one of the biggest gains in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, surging over 74% to $0.0000072 on the back of exploding trading volume. The token is up over 160% in the past week.
The rally comes ahead of the Dec. 11 sentencing of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, who admitted to financial fraud charges in the United States and faces up to 12 years in prison. Traders appear to be speculating that a final verdict could bring clarity to a project long mired in legal uncertainty. On top of that, Do Kwon’s hearing brings attention to the project that has long been missing.
At the same time, technical factors are attracting attention. Token burns, where coins are permanently removed from circulation, have accelerated.
In the last week alone, 849 million LUNC was destroyed, with Binance contributing by burning half of the fees from LUNC transactions. The December pace has already exceeded 959 million tokens burned. According to a tracking dashboard, a total of 75.89 billion LUNC has now been burned by Binance.
Although relatively small compared to the circulating supply of 5.49 trillion tokens, the burning activity has energized a community that still hopes to revive the ecosystem following the 2022 collapse that wiped out $40 billion in value.
To add to this momentum, Binance has suspended LUNC withdrawals ahead of the Terra Chain v2.18 upgrade scheduled for December 8. The upgrade aims to fix interoperability bugs and improve network stability.
Nonetheless, the token remains volatile while outperforming the market as a whole. Based on the performance of the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), it fell almost 2.3% over the same period.
