The venture firm Pantera Capital cashed out around 80% of its investments in the Terra ecosystem with substantial profit before the project’s collapse. The Block reported this, citing firm managers.
“Over the past year, the market has diverged significantly from fundamentals, so we closed most of our Terra position before any of the latest events occurred. About 80%, fairly gradually,” said Pantera Capital CIO Joey Krug.
Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit told the publication that exiting early allowed turning $1.7 million into roughly $170 million.
The firm invested in Terraform Labs, the company behind the crypto project, at least twice. In January 2021, Pantera participated in a financing round в размере $25 млн, and in July joined another — на сумму $150 млн.
In a subsequent interview Krug clarified that the firm had separate investments in the LUNA token. Pantera acquired the asset in July 2020 after its appearance on the market, using trading liquidity rather than venture capital.
To clarify, we didn’t invest in LUNA in those private financing rounds, we bought it once it was in the public markets in July of 2020 via our liquid trading vehicles, not our venture style investments.
— Joey Krug (@joeykrug) May 18, 2022
“We managed to trim this position as well, as it grew and became increasingly profitable, to diversify the portfolio. Initially we invested in LUNA, assessing progress in developer adoption, use for payments, and in the Terra ecosystem more broadly,” said Krug.
According to Krug, the firm managed to liquidate most of its remaining LUNA when the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), for the issuance of which the token is used, утратил привязку к доллару:
“We exited two-thirds of this position in the asset at an average price of $25.6”.
In July 2020, LUNA traded in the range of $0.20-$0.34. At the time of writing, the token trades at about $0.00012 (CoinGecko).
Forbes назвали коллапс проекта «пятой перезагрузкой» крипторынка.