Crypto Entrepreneur Backs Terra Relaunch Amid Skepticism, Says Price Collapse Will Foster Institutional Adoption

Crypto Entrepreneur Backs Terra Relaunch Amid Skepticism, Says Price Collapse Will Foster Institutional Adoption

ong Kong's Hex Trust had been working closely with Terraform Labs when the Singapore-based company's crypto tokens, UST and Luna, collapsed early last month. The crypto custodial firm said it had managed to avoid the "bloodbath" by liquidating its collateral positions in the days just prior to the implosion. Hex Trust had seen the warning signs begin to emerge over the weekend of May 7 and 8, when investors started pulling their funds out of Anchor Protocol, a crypto lending platform that promised nearly 20% interest payments for deposits of UST. Over the ensuing two days, UST lost its peg to the U. S. dollar, plunging by as much as 25%, according to tracker CoinGecko. Although Terraform Labs was one of the investors in Hex Trust's $88 million funding round announced in March, the crypto custodian said it didn't receive any information from Terraform Labs as the collapse unfolded. Terraform Labs, which also developed Anchor, suspended UST's swap line with other stablecoins—a clear sign that it could no longer defend UST's value. "Luckily we're very conservative from a risk perspective," Hex Trust's cofounder and CEO Alessio Quaglini said from the firm's head office in Hong Kong. "We're always over collateralized,