It's not easy to engineer a new currency, especially an algorithmic stablecoin. Terra (UST-USD), the world's third-largest stablecoin, lost its peg to the U.S. dollar on Monday, dropping to as low as 69 cents and causing a swathe of investors to liquidate their holdings. Things recovered somewhat on Tuesday, before it tumbled below 40 cents early Wednesday, causing widespread panic as the controversial stablecoin (which has a circulating supply of nearly 17B tokens) went into freefall. Snapshot: There are basically two types of stablecoins, which use distributed ledger technology to attach the value of tokens to something that already exists. One is backed by cash and assets to maintain their value, like Tether (USDT-USD) and USD Coin (USDC-USD), while others do not have any collateral behind them like algorithmic stablecoins. Instead, the pegs on which these coins are built are supposed to be maintained through an arbitrage relationship with another
