Crypto-loving S Koreans bet on Luna rising from ashes, worrying regulator

business-standard.com:

Reckoning they have little to lose with prices so ridiculously low, South Korean speculators in recent days have piled into Luna, a cryptocurrency that lost 99.99% of its value last week after its paired stablecoin TerraUSD collapsed.

Both tokens are affiliated with Terra, a blockchain platform co-founded by Korean developer Do Kwon and, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, investors in them have lost around $42 billion.

Luna had been one of the world's most popular cryptocurrencies and its downfall, alongside TerraUSD, caused mayhem across the crypto spectrum globally, with bitcoin losing around a quarter of its value between May 9-12.

Worth nearly $100 in late April, Luna is now trading at a fraction of one cent - so low that there has been a rush of buying from speculators betting that it will stage a miraculous recovery, with some clinging to the belief that it is just too big to be allowed to fail.

"Luna was once a major coin of top-ten market capitalisation, so they will do whatever it takes to revive it," one hopeful investor wrote in a blog on South Korea's internet platform Naver, without saying who "they" could be.

The blogger said he had bought 300,000 Luna over the weekend at 0.33 won ($0.0003) each, using an international crypto exchange.

As the sudden resurgence of buying crossed its radar, South Korea's Financial Services Commission warned people on Tuesday against investing in Luna.

The number of investors in the failed cryptocurrency rose more than 50% in just over two days at South Korea's major exchanges to stand at 280,000 as of May 15, according to a source at the FSC who, as is customary for South Korean bureaucrats, declined to be named.

The buying mostly came from domestic