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Anatomy of a Stablecoin’s failure: The Terra-Luna case

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  • Briola, Antonio
  • Vidal-Tomás, David
  • Wang, Yuanrong
  • Aste, Tomaso

Abstract

We quantitatively describe the main events that led to the Terra project’s failure in May 2022. We first review, in a systematic way, news from heterogeneous social media sources; we discuss the fragility of the Terra project and its vicious dependence on the Anchor protocol. We hence identify the crash’s trigger events, analysing hourly and transaction data for Bitcoin, Luna, and TerraUSD. Finally, using state-of-the-art techniques from network science, we study the evolution of dependency structures for 61 highly capitalised cryptocurrencies during the down-market and we also highlight the absence of herding behaviour analysing cross-sectional absolute deviation of returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Briola, Antonio & Vidal-Tomás, David & Wang, Yuanrong & Aste, Tomaso, 2023. "Anatomy of a Stablecoin’s failure: The Terra-Luna case," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:51:y:2023:i:c:s1544612322005359
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.103358
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    Cited by:

    1. José Almeida & Tiago Cruz Gonçalves, 2023. "A Decade of Cryptocurrency Investment Literature: A Cluster-Based Systematic Analysis," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-20, May.
    2. Carlos Cantú & Cecilia Franco & Jon Frost, 2024. "The economic implications of services in the metaverse," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 144.
    3. Saengchote, Kanis & Samphantharak, Krislert, 2024. "Digital money creation and algorithmic stablecoin run," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Ravi Kashyap, 2024. "The Democratization of Wealth Management: Hedged Mutual Fund Blockchain Protocol," Papers 2405.02302, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    5. Mercik, Aleksander & Słoński, Tomasz & Karaś, Marta, 2024. "Understanding crypto-asset exposure: An investigation of its impact on performance and stock sensitivity among listed companies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    6. Arman Abgaryan & Utkarsh Sharma, 2023. "Intermediating DFMM Asset (IDA)," Papers 2311.05234, arXiv.org.
    7. Ravi Kashyap, 2023. "DeFi Security: Turning The Weakest Link Into The Strongest Attraction," Papers 2312.00033, arXiv.org.
    8. Antonio Briola & Silvia Bartolucci & Tomaso Aste, 2024. "Deep Limit Order Book Forecasting," Papers 2403.09267, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    9. Saengchote, Kanis & Putniņš, Talis & Samphantharak, Krislert, 2023. "Does DeFi remove the need for trust? Evidence from a natural experiment in stablecoin lending," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    10. Yousaf, Imran & Abrar, Afsheen & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2023. "Decentralized and centralized exchanges: Which digital tokens pose a greater contagion risk?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    11. Piñeiro-Chousa, Juan & Šević, Aleksandar & González-López, Isaac, 2023. "Impact of social metrics in decentralized finance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    12. Gordon, Steven & Li, Zhi & Marthinsen, John, 2023. "A deep analysis of the economics and finance research on cryptocurrencies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    13. Bennett, Donyetta & Mekelburg, Erik & Williams, T.H., 2023. "BeFi meets DeFi: A behavioral finance approach to decentralized finance asset pricing," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    14. Raphael Auer & Bernhard Haslhofer & Stefan Kitzler & Pietro Saggese & Friedhelm Victor, 2024. "The technology of decentralized finance (DeFi)," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 55-95, March.
    15. Bhambhwani, Siddharth M. & Huang, Allen H., 2024. "Auditing decentralized finance," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2).
    16. Ravi Kashyap, 2024. "The Concentration Risk Indicator: Raising the Bar for Financial Stability and Portfolio Performance Measurement," Papers 2408.07271, arXiv.org.
    17. David Vidal-Tom'as & Antonio Briola & Tomaso Aste, 2023. "FTX's downfall and Binance's consolidation: The fragility of centralised digital finance," Papers 2302.11371, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    18. Kensuke Ito, 2024. "Cryptoeconomics and Tokenomics as Economics: A Survey with Opinions," Papers 2407.15715, arXiv.org.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stablecoin; Cryptocurrency; LUNA; UST; Network science; Herding;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General

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