Uprise Loses $20 Million In Botched LUNC Short Due to Extreme Volatility

South Korean company Uprise reportedly lost $20 million in a Terra Classic (LUNC) trade after the cryptocurrency surged by 1,150% within a four-hour candle on May 11.

While the cryptocurrency crashed dramatically from $65 on May 9 to tap an all-time low of $0.00000112 by May 12, LUNC recorded some ultra-volatile pumps in between. At the time, only Binance traded the crypto asset as most crypto exchanges hurriedly delisted the token to safeguard investors.

One of the ultra-volatile pumps mentioned above occurred on May 11, when Terra Classic jumped from $0.68 to $7.88 within a 4-hour candle. In the hours after that spike, almost all gains were erased again. However, numerous short positions had been opened before this volatile pump, Uprise’s trade being one of them. It’s safe to say that all these trades got promptly stopped out or liquidated as no trade can withstand an 11x spike in the opposite direction.

The “Robo-advisor” and AI trading platform used artificial intelligence to execute leveraged long and short trades but did not time its LUNC short well and ended up losing 99% of customers’ assets. In a statement addressed to local Seoul news agency Sedaily, Uprise explained:

“Due to great unexpected volatility in the market, there has been damage to customer assets. We plan to finalize the report on our virtual asset business soon.”

Uprise to Compensate Customers, Suspends Trading Services

The firm further explained that it planned on assembling some form of compensation for customers. Estimates place that the total assets lost in the LUNC trade were 26 billion Korean won ($20.4 million). At press time, Uprise has suspended all trading services.