Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, popularly known as CZ, has debunked a journalist’s rumor that claimed the cryptocurrency exchange had invested $300 million in the failed Terra project.
Last week, the entire crypto industry was rocked by the collapse of LUNA/UST, which sent a ripple across the whole crypto industry as LUNA was one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
However, amid the LUNA crash event and general negative trends in the crypto market, a rumor circulated on Twitter that the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, was one of the top investors in the Terra ecosystem.
Lately, Changpeng Zhao has been one of the leading critics of the Terraform Labs team since their projects crashed on Wednesday.
In the now-deleted tweet of the Block’s Larry Cermak, the journalist implied that Changpeng Zhaos’ criticism of Terra stems from Binance’s investment in LUNA and that the recent crash has affected CZ financially.
He further stated that Binance led Terra’s seed round in 2019 and 2021 and recently invested $300 million in the recently concluded one.
Easy to see why CZ is tweeting so passionately about LUNA. Binance led Terra’s seed round in 2019 and Terra’s 2021 round. In the last one that ended just like six months ago, they invested $300M with a 4y vest and 1y cliff (same amount as Jump).
Larry Cermak’s deleted tweet.
However, the Binance’s CEO on Sunday dismissed the journalist’s claims as untrue in clarifying the cryptocurrency exchange early-stage involvement in Terra in an eight-part Twitter thread.
Changpeng Zhao stated that the cryptocurrency exchange did not acquire Terra’s stable coin, UST, nor did it participate in the second round of LUNA’s fundraising.
Also, the CEO claims that Larry got his facts wrong as Binance Lab only invested $3 million in the Terra Layer-0 blockchain in 2018.
Additionally, CZ has requested for more transparency from the Terraform lab team, particularly on on-chain transactions, as third-party analysis is not sufficient given the current situation.
