- Jaewoo Cho, a blockchain expert and assistant professor at Hansung University in Seoul, has spent time tracking down Terra co-founder Do Kwon.
- Do Kwon currently has arrest warrants in both South Korea and the United States, accused of fraud.
- At the moment the whereabouts of what until a year ago was considered one of the prodigies of the crypto ecosystem is unknown.
In 2018, Daniel Shin and Do Kwon founded Terraform Labs, the company behind the Terra ecosystem comprised of the Terra USD (UST) logarithmic stablecoin and the Terra (LUNA) token.
Although the company started with a low profile, at the beginning of 2021 LUNA exploded, and with it also the capitalization of UST. Both assets had significant growth and managed to place themselves in the top 10 of the main cryptocurrencies.
LUNA and UST, which was until its last days as the most successful algorithmic stablecoin in history, They quickly rose to investor darlings and Do Kwon made a name for himself in the crypto ecosystem as one of the industry’s prodigies.
however everything changed in May 2022, When concerned about the crypto winter and the price decline of the main cryptocurrencies, investors in Terra projects decided to pull out worried that the unsecured parity would hold in UST and LUNA. This led to the collapse of the two digital assets and with them, several companies that had opted for the Terra project, had to declare themselves in bankruptcy.
Authorities initiate investigation against Terra
The downfall of the Terra ecosystem quickly drew the attention of regulators around the world, mainly from South Korea, the nation where the crypto firm had been founded and where around 280,000 citizens were affected by the collapse.
As part of investigations by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office, South Korea imposed a travel ban on key members of Terraform Labs in June last year and in September. South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Do Kwan and because his whereabouts were unknown, the nation’s authorities turned to Interpol to issue a “Red alert” to the co-founder of Terraform Labs.
Do Kwan was believed to be in Singapore, however in September the nation’s authorities declared that Do Kwon was no longer on their territory.
Until now, the whereabouts of the co-founder of Terra are unknown and the investigations of South Korea have been joined by those of the United States Well, a few days ago the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a legal claim against Terraform Labs PTE Ltd, and its co-founder Do Hyeong Kwon on the accusation of having orchestrated a multi-million dollar fraud through cryptocurrencies.
The teacher behind Do Kwon
Sometimes the search for justice or answers is not only in the hands of the authorities and there are people who begin to carry out investigations on their own. This is the case of Jaewoo Cho, a blockchain expert and assistant professor at Seoul Hansung Universitywho has spent time following Do Kwon’s tracks.
In an interview for the media DL News The professor declared that he is obsessed with the addresses and on-chain data of the co-founder of Terra and pointed out that this experience has been like creating a psychological profile of the accused which helped him in a certain way to get to know him.
Cho’s interest in Terraform Labs began in April 2019. when he first heard of the company. From that moment on, the university professor predicted the collapse of the project, since he identified several structural weaknesses at that time.
In the footsteps of Do Kwan
According to the medium After the fall of TerraUSD Cho was contacted by a South Korean journalist to investigate the on-chain activity of Terraform Labsespecially around its Project Dawn funding initiative that began in September 2021 and ended in April 2022.
Cho agreed to the request and was surprised to see the size of the scam, since millions of dollars were involved. Since then, Cho has continued to identify the wallet addresses of Terraform and Kwon and track their transactions..
The data Cho collected was posted on Twitter by FatManTerra, an account known for sharing insider tips tracking Terra’s collapse in September. In one of his post FatMan Terra stated that Terraform Labs sent a total of $3.9 billion worth of UST to exchanges including Binance and KuCoin, calling it “the biggest Crypto fraud.”
Cho said he has noticed a change in Kwon’s transaction habits in recent months. According to Cho, until recently Kwon”used the same old addresses to transfer money to different addresses and exchanges,” now, he seems to have started using other addresses to move his money, “apparently through over-the-counter trading or through brokers”
“I suspect that there are some friends or brokers who are helping Kwon to withdraw his money.Cho said.
Terraform could come back
Terraforma has begun to implement various strategies to return to the market with the Terra 2.0 project.
Part of this has been the launch of its TerraUSD and LUNA assets and a new blockchain that kept the Terra name, leaving the original assets under the TerraClassicUSD (USTC) and Terra Classic (LUNC) name.
In this regard, Cho is optimistic and points out that the Terra 2.0 project is “totally absurd.”
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