Binance CEO says retail users should be the first to be reimbursed after Luna crash

The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance had the potential to reap huge earnings from Terra’s UST stablecoin before it crashed last week, along with its sister cryptocurrency Luna, reported Fortune.

In 2018, Binance put $3 million in Luna and received 15 million tokens in return. At Luna’s price peak in April 2022, those tokens were worth $1.6 billion. Now at Luna's price, the tokens are worth about $2,391, Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet.

Despite Binance’s big losses, Zhao said he still wants retail traders who lost money during Luna’s crash last week to be reimbursed before Binance is. “To lead by example on PROTECTING USERS, Binance will let this go and ask the Terra project team to compensate the retails [sic] users first, Binance last, if ever,” Zhao tweeted on May 16.

Binance has been a key supporter of the company that created Luna, Terraform Labs, for years. Binance’s investment arm was a lead investor in a $32 million funding round in 2018 that Terraform Labs said at the time was meant to build a “modern financial system on the blockchain", according to VentureBeat.

The Binance CEO said last week that he was “very disappointed” with how the team behind Luna and UST handled the collapse. When Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon said he wanted to fork Terra, or create a new blockchain and distribute millions of tokens in a new cryptocurrency to supporters, Zhao said it won't work.