Meet The Crypto That Advanced Close To 50% On a Week Marred by Ukraine-Induced Volatility

The past couple of weeks have not been easy on financial markets. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent the markets crashing by his decision to invade Ukraine in the pretext of helping two separatist regions in the country.

After plunging through the middle of the week, most markets recovered since Thursday to close out with gains. The cryptocurrency space was no exception, as most coins lock-stepped with other risky bets.

One crypto, however, stood towering tall, standing head and shoulders above the rest. Here's a look at how it managed to circumvent the across-the-board sell-off and closed the week with robust gains.

Luna To The Moon: Terra LUNA/USD has advanced about 50% since Sunday, and what has been noteworthy is that the crypto gained in each of the sessions of the week.

In comparison, Bitcoin BTC/USD has a weekly gain of a little over 1.5%, as the apex currency clawed back from its losses incurred in the first few sessions of the week. The crypto has dropped to a low of $34,459.22 on Thursday before finding its footing.

Despite Luna's rally in the past week, the crypto is still off its all-time highs of $101.27 reached on Dec. 24.

Related Link: How to Buy Terra (LUNA)

What's Driving The Luna Rally: Luna is the native token of the Terra blockchain, which is a public blockchain protocol, deploying a suite of algorithmic decentralized stablecoins. It is the second-largest DeFi protocol, behind Ethereum ETH/USD.

Luna is currently the ninth most-valued crypto and has a market capitalization of $28.12 billion, according to crypto price tracking website CoinMarketCap.

Singapore-based non-profit organization Luna Foundation Guard announced this week it has closed a $1 billion private token sale, with the proceeds to be used to establish a TerraUSD UST/USD forex reserve denominated in Bitcoin. TerraUSD is Terra's decentralized stablecoin, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar in a ratio of 1:1.

"The UST Forex Reserve is an initiative to provide a further layer of support using assets that are considered less correlated to the Terra ecosystem, initially with Bitcoin but with plans to expand to other major non-correlated assets within the market moving forward," the organization said in a statement.

Terra-based stablecoins, including UST, can be created by burning Luna token and vice versa. Users are incentivized by the protocol to burn and mint in a way to ensure that price parity exists between UST and Luna.

At last check, Luna was seen rallying 10.97% to $74.91.

Related Link: How To Navigate The Ukraine Crisis-Induced Market Chaos