LUNA Is 'The Latest Shiny Thing In The Crypto Space' As It Aims For The No. 10 Spot

LUNA has beaten Avalanche (AVAX) to take the 11th spot in the cryptocurrency market, with a market capitalization of $26.5 billion, becoming what an industry insider called the "the latest shiny thing in the crypto space."

The governance token of the Terra network has risen more than 70% in the past 14 days, making it one of the most profitable tokens in the entire crypto market, data from CoinGecko showed. It touched an all-time high at $69, and was trading at $68.57 at 12:21 a.m. ET.

Data from CoinMarketCap suggests that the token has risen by 7.2% in the past 24 hours, and if LUNA continues to experience the same bullishness, it is well on track to replace Dogecoin, which has a market capitalization of $26.7 billion, at number 10th spot.

The surge in interest comes at a time when the firm behind the token, Terraform Labs, and its CEO Do Kwon, are engaged in a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over another venture, Mirror Protocol.

The Mirror Protocol offers digital tokens mirroring real-world assets, including U.S.-traded stocks versions, thus running foul of the regulator. The firm is accused of soliciting unregistered securities, not seeking approval from the SEC, and acting as its own private exchange.

However, it seems that this hasn’t affected the popularity of the Terra platform. The platform uses algorithmic, fiat-pegged stablecoins like UST, which are minted by burning LUNA, making it a deflationary asset.

“Crypto is all about creating a buzz, and there’s a lot of attention on the Terra ecosystem, be it for DeFi innovation, stablecoin products, a recent network upgrade, or Luna staking,” Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, told Bloomberg.

It’s “the latest shiny thing in the crypto space, following in the footsteps of other blockchains like Solana and Avalanche, all of which have witnessed explosive gains in the past year,” he added. Avalanche itself briefly took the number 10 spot on the cryptocurrency rankings from Dogecoin last month.

The recent approval of a proposal for the network to burn 88 million LUNA from the community pool, to convert to the UST stablecoin, seems also to have attracted investors' attention.

“Luna’s price dynamics are mostly a function of the demand for UST, and by extension, the demand for using UST across various applications and blockchains,” Brian Curran, head of communications at Terraform Labs, told Bloomberg.