Behind the Surge in USTC Price: The New Stablecoin Project Mint Cash Sparks Market Discussion

Recently, the price of USTC has surged significantly, mainly influenced by the airdrop expectations of the new stablecoin project Mint Cash in the Terra ecosystem. This article will provide a brief introduction to the Mint Cash project and its underlying team, market expectations, and analyze the connections among the three topics that are hotly debated in the industry: Celestia, Nomic, and Anchor.

1. The Real Reason for the Price Surge

The core reason for the price increase of USTC is not the community proposal as rumored externally, but is likely related to the upcoming new project Mint Cash involving former Anchor team members and the new version of Anchor Protocol. Currently, the community proposal is only in the forum discussion stage and has not yet entered the voting process.

2. Mint Cash Project Introduction

Mint Cash is a stablecoin system backed by Bitcoin, with its technological foundation derived from the original Terra Classic codebase.

3. The relationship between Celestia, Nomic, and Anchor

Mint Cash, as an IBC chain originating from Terra Classic, may adopt Celestia technology for its data availability layer. The issuance of stablecoins will utilize Nomic's nBTC, while a new version of the Anchor Protocol, named Anchor Sail, will be launched within the Mint Cash ecosystem.

The new Anchor Sail plays a crucial role in Mint Cash, serving as the core link in the growth of stablecoins and the anchoring mechanism.

4. Project Team Background

The core developers of Mint Cash mainly come from the former Anchor team and Aleph Research. Notably, some team developers also plan to collaborate with CosmWasm and Berachain to jointly develop Polaris EVM support based on Cosmos SDK.

5. Mint Cash's Cold Start Strategy

Mint Cash will be launched through two methods involving USTC:

1. Users holding UST or LUNA before the crash on May 10, 2022 Users who lock and destroy a specified amount of USTC through the Mint Cash airdrop program 2).

Although the specific airdrop algorithm has not been made public, market rumors suggest that USTC will be calculated at a valuation of 1 dollar, which is also an important factor that has sparked heated discussions in the market.

6. Potential Return Analysis

Currently, the circulating supply of USTC is about 9 billion, but it is estimated that only 1/3 to 1/2 will participate in new projects. Based on a valuation of 1 US dollar, the valuation of new projects may range from 3 billion to 4.5 billion US dollars. In comparison, the current FDV of LUNA 2.0 is about 800 million US dollars.

If we take the previous price of $0.014 as a benchmark, the valuation range is between 40 million to 60 million dollars. Market reactions indicate that investors generally believe this valuation is low and has high investment potential.

However, investors also need to consider their confidence in the new team. Rational investors should thoroughly research the team's background and the project white paper, while risk-tolerant investors may be more interested in this project.

7. Market Reaction Analysis

The price of USTC rose after the concepts from Celestia, Nomic, and Anchor emerged, taking about 3-4 days or even close to a week. In the early stages, the coin price hardly fluctuated. It is worth noting that USTC has good liquidity and is not easily manipulated by small amounts of funds. Data shows that the USTC trading volume on a certain exchange exceeded 100 million USD in just one night and has been on a continuous upward trend.

It is important to emphasize that the goal of the Mint Cash project is not to bring the price of USTC back to $1, but to launch a brand new project. In short, investors' valuation expectations for the new project directly influence the current price trend of USTC.