Terra’s market cap is now $13.6 billion.
Terra Hits New Record High
Terra is on a tear.
The fast-growing blockchain’s LUNA token hit a price of $34.25 for the first time today after a major nine-day rally. It’s up around 100% since Aug. 15. Terra’s native asset has made a significant recovery since the market-wide May crash when it was trading as low as $4.18; it’s now the 12th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of roughly $13.6 billion.
Terra is a programmable money network that primarily focuses on stablecoins. Key projects on Terra include the synthetics platform Mirror Protocol and Anchor Protocol, a DeFi platform for earning yield on stablecoins. LUNA is used to stabilize the price of stablecoins, incentivize validators, and mine transactions.
Terra is one of many Layer 1 blockchains that’s seen a major uptick over the last few weeks. While much of the focus has been on Ethereum’s “NFT summer” and recently launched EIP-1559 update, many other chains have also seen heightened interest as confidence returns to the market. ATOM, the token powering Cosmos, is currently worth $21.33 after starting the month at around $13. Polkadot’s DOT has gained about 53% since the start of the month, and Solana’s SOL has also outperformed almost every coin in the market: it’s up over 100% this month, trading at $78. SOL started the year at $1.52, which means it’s jumped over 5,000% in the last eight months.
While several Layer 1 blockchains have enjoyed a rise, one of the major developments of the week so far has concerned Bitcoin. The leading crypto broke $50,000 for the first time in 100 days Monday, which could bode well for other Layer 1s and the rest of the market. Historically, when Bitcoin makes a big move, other lower cap assets like Ethereum tend to follow closely behind.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH, ETH2X-FLI, ATOM, and several other cryptocurrencies.
