What’s Behind LUNA’s Rally, Could Its Price Decouple From Bitcoin?

Reynaldo Marquez

3 years ago

3 mins read

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The price of LUNA moves on its own as the crypto market trends to the downside. Terra’s native cryptocurrency records a 6.4% profit in the last week, as BTC, ETH, and BNB, move sideways.

At the time of writing, LUNA trades at $89.35 with a 4.8% loss in the last 24 hours. Despite recent losses, the cryptocurrency is quickly moving up the top 10 cryptos by market. Currently, it sits at the 7th position after pushing down Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Polkadot (DOT).

LUNA Terra LUNAUSDT — LUNA trends to the upside on the daily chart. Source: LUNAUSDT Tradingview

A report from economist Murray Rudd attempts to demonstrate a potential decoupling between Bitcoin (BTC) and Terra (LUNA). The number one cryptocurrency has a strong dominance over the entire market.

Therefore, it is common for altcoins to trend lower of higher, to move in tandem, with BTC’s price action. Recently, LUNA’s price has possible start to breakaway from this pattern, it sometimes tends to move on its own direction regardless of Bitcoin.

In order to support this thesis, Rudd examined the LUNA/BTC performance on different timeframes, and with different metrics. The economist represented this trading pair’s performance with different correlation zones.

As seen below, the green area represents a high correlation, while the red to white area represent periods when LUNA is uncorrelated (red) or shows a low correlation (white) with BTC. Based on this chart, Rudd said:

The degree of positive correlation appears to have dropped in duration and strength (i.e., more time spent in the weak positive correlation zone compared to strong correlation) from Aug 2021.

Luna LUNABTC Terra — Source: Murray Rudd via Substack

Furthermore, looking into the LUNA/BTC correlation for a 30-day period from January 2020 to January 2021 the economist found moments when the metric moved with more visibility.

For example, the chart below shows a decline in correlation for the trading pair during Q4, 2020, when BTC began it ascend towards new highs. Conversely, the chart indicates LUNA tends to move on its own, at least for this period, after long period of BTC’s price consolidation.

LUNA Terra LUNABTC — Source: Murray Rudd via Substack

The Luna Decoupling, What It Means For Future Price Action

The economist also determined a first major period of uncorrelated prices for the LUNA/BTC trading pair during spring 2021. At that time, the crypto market reached a local top surpassing the $2 trillion in terms of capitalization.

Across 2021, Terra’s native asset will experience other uncorrelated or low correlation periods. When the crypto market started bouncing back from a long period of bearish price action, summer 2021, the LUNA/BTC trading pair “abruptly flipped from positive correlation to being uncorrelated”.

In September 2021 and December 2021, LUNA experience similar events. At that time, the ecosystem was discussing several major improvements to its mainnet, and the implementation of a burning mechanism for LUNA.

These updates and new mechanisms in the Terra ecosystem have been live for a short while. As time goes by, they could contribute with LUNA’s full decoupling from Bitcoin and the crypto market. Currently, Rudd believes this event may never happen, but he added:

LUNA price is not (and likely will not) completely decoupled from BTC price. This indicator cannot be used to predict future moves in correlation but it has definitively shown a significant decoupling of LUNA and Bitcoin prices since summer 2021.

Uncorrelated assets are potentially valuable for investors as they could become hedge against trends in the entire sector. In a bear market, investors could protect their wealth by jumping into a LUNA position or by using its stablecoin UST.

The increase demand for this decentralized stablecoin, and its impact on the price of LUNA, is yet another reason that could further strengthen the long-term bull thesis for the Terra ecosystem.

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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