TerraClassicUSD (USTC) Rises 800% in 1 Week - What's Happening?

Lately, it seems like there has never been a dull moment in the Earth / MOON ecosystem. Last month, the cryptocurrency world watched in horror as Terra lost the dollar peg. Terra was a stablecoin, but instead of being stabilized by a fiat currency, she was backed by a sister cryptocurrency: LUNA. Terra's de-pegging forced LUNA to mint trillions of coins to maintain the relationship. With this sudden, massive supply surge, the value of each of the coins plummeted, causing them to lose more than 99% of their value. The result was that both coins were rendered virtually worthless, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars.

The recovery plan

Following this event, some investors expected excess MOONS to be burned to try to stabilize. Instead of doing so, Terra Labs announced it would hard fork, calling the original TerraClassicUSD LUNA Classic (quotation LUNC) and creating new tokens, Terra 2.0 and LUNA, which would have been on a new blockchain parallel to the old one without a shared history. The launch took place on May 28, following a governance vote.

At first, the new plan didn't seem to make a difference. On June 19th, TerraClassic's price was $ 0,006, which is extremely low. But suddenly, in the past week, the coin has risen nearly 800%, reaching a value of $ 0,089 today. Investors and observers are intrigued by this surge, which could be due to several causes.

StarShip to the rescue

One of these could be StarShip's announcement that it wants to start accepting Luna Classic as a payment, finally giving these tokens a reason to live after losing their stablecoin status. StarShip is a blockchain technology metaverse that includes, among other things, an NFT game and a centralized exchange (CEXy.Finance). The company formalized the partnership on Twitter saying, "We are proud to announce that $ LUNC will be accepted as a payment within the StarShip Universe, with a 1,2% Profit Burn as voted by the community!"

The profit burn “tax” is critical, as it will begin to reduce the supply of tokens in circulation, thus causing a return in value.