OKX Delists Terra's LUNA and UST Citing User Protection

Crypto exchange OKX said it planned to end spot listings of UST and delisted margin and borrowing services for Terra ecosystem tokens such as LUNA, anchor (ANC) and mirror (MIR).

Rival Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, also suspended spot trading for LUNA and UST against its own stablecoin BUSD on Friday, but founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said in a tweet at 15:50 UST that trading in LUNA has since been resumed.

OKX planned to terminate exchange-traded UST trading for bitcoin (BTC), avalanche (AVAX), solana (SOL) and ether (ETH) as of 10:00 UTC, adding to earlier cancellations of the margin trading and borrowing function for LUNA, ANC and MIR. Perpetual swaps were suspended at 8:00 UTC.

“Seismic crypto market movements like we’ve seen this week tend to deliver some pretty brutal lessons,” Lennix Lai, an OKX director, said in an email. “We’re seeing a flight away from direct investment in DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols in the wake of UST breakdown.

“The reality is that centralized exchanges are set up to provide much greater levels of protection for users whatever the markets are doing,” Lai said.

In explaining the reasons for Binance's suspension, Zhao initially tweeted that "an exponential amount of new LUNA were minted due to flaws in the design of the Terra protocol. Some of our users, unaware of the large amounts of newly minted LUNA outside the exchange, started to buy LUNA again, without understanding that as soon as deposits are allowed, the price will likely crash further. Due to these significant risks, we suspended trading."

UST slumped to as low as 22 cents earlier this week amid a run on the cryptocurrency. The prices of its related LUNA token dropped 99.7% to pennies on Thursday from levels above $60 earlier this week.

LUNA and other tokens continue to trade on crypto exchanges FTX and Gate at writing time.

"Withdrawals for LUNA and UST will open when the network becomes stable," Binance said.

UPDATE (May 13, 11:31 UTC ): Adds Binance suspension to headline, throughout.

UPDATE (May 13, 16:34 UTC ): Updated headline and story with information about Binance's resumption of trading of LUNA.