In January, Mike Novogratz — hedge fund rock star turned crypto heavy hitter — tweeted a picture of a sizeable new tattoo on his left shoulder. It featured the image of a wolf howling at the moon and a banner saying “Luna”, a cryptocurrency then trading at $78.
“I’m officially a Lunatic!!!” enthused the one-time macro investor at the Fortress hedge fund group, and now founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, an investment management firm with ambitions to be “the Goldman Sachs of crypto”. By the start of April, luna peaked at $116 after being snapped up by buyers including enthusiastic retail investors.
But this week, luna lost it all. Its value slid to zero after terraUSD, a sister token, collapsed in value, despite being designed to track the value of the US dollar.