Currently by Prometheus

$41 billion VAPORIZED! The Terra LUNA/UST implosion, algorithmic stable coins, and the outlook for crypto w/ Henry Elder

Episode Summary

Henry Elder is portfolio manager for all of Wave Financial's decentralized finance investment products. That means he’s perfectly placed to explain the crypto story that everyone's talking about—the implosion of crypto coin Terra Luna and the $41 billion that got vaporized overnight. Henry takes us through the crisis that developed in the past week and how a paradoxical announcement by the Luna Foundation Guard—think of it as centra bank to UST—broke the stable coin's peg to the dollar. Henry then tells us why he remains bullish on crypto generally and describes how the US can establish dollar dominance in crypto via US dollar-pegged stable coins.

Episode Notes

Henry Elder is portfolio manager for all of Wave Financial's decentralized finance investment products and manages $250 million in stable coin and crypto-asset investment strategies. 

That means he’s perfectly placed to explain the crypto story that everyone's talking about—the implosion of crypto coin Terra Luna and the $41 billion that got vaporized overnight. 

Henry does a masterful job of setting the scene that led up to this crypto crisis. He lays out what stable coins are, explains the difference between collateralized stable coins and algorithmic stable coins like UST, and describes the relationship between UST and Luna. 

Henry then takes us through the crisis that developed in the past week and how a paradoxical announcement by the Luna Foundation Guard—think of it as centra bank to UST—broke the stable coin's peg to the dollar. 

We talk about how won and lost in the crisis' wake, how Luna's collapse is reflected in the pricing of bitcoin and Ethereum, and the prospect of a comeback for Luna. We then zoom out and talk about the timing of this crisis, coming as it does during a recession, a war in Europe, and a lull in enthusiasm for crypto generally. Henry tells us why he remains bullish on crypto generally and describes how the US can establish dollar dominance in crypto via US dollar-pegged stable coins.