Swiss asset manager denies $3B LUNA/UST bail-out talks

GAM Investments has quashed fake news reports that surfaced on Friday that claimed the Swiss asset manager would invest some $3 billion to aid in the recovery of the Terra ecosystem, including LUNA and TrueUSD (UST) stablecoin. 

An announcement published on May 12 claimed that the firm was engaging in talks with Terraform Labs to assist in recovery attempts after Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST lost its $1 peg — causing a cataclysmic crash of the acclaimed blockchain protocol which had become a darling of the Decentralized Finance space.

Cointelegraph has confirmed with GAM Investments that the press release was fabricated — with head of communications and investor relations Charles Naylor categorically labeling the release as fake news – which even included fake quotes from GAM CEO Peter Sanderson.

Related: Breaking: Binance suspends LUNA and UST trading amid issues on Terra blockchain

The ongoing LUNA/UST debacle has been the focal point of the cryptocurrency space this week – with the collapse of the Terra ecosystem reverberating through the markets. DeFi protocols that were tied to UST saw losses of up to 80%, while Bitcoin holdings backed by UST were also forced into a sell-off which saw the price of BTC go as low as $24,000 before recovering.

Terra’s founder Do Kwon and his team released a proposed recovery strategy for the LUNA ecosystem midweek which involved burning $1.4 billion UST while staking 240 million LUNA tokens in an effort to stem the devaluation of the UST $1 peg.

A day later, LUNA validators took a decision to take the network offline as the volatility of the LUNA/UST pair provided the potential for further governance attacks. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance took the decision to suspend LUNA/BUSD and UST/BUSD on its spot trading platform following the halting of the Terra blockchain.