Kwon Do-hyung, Terraform Lab’s co-founder, recently made another appearance post-Terra crash in an interview with Unchained Podcast’s Laura Shin. The Stanford-educated entrepreneur has hardly been spotted in public in the last five months and his social activity has been limited to responses to allegations. Kwon is wanted in South Korea, where he has denied reports of being on the run multiple times.
The elusive Terra head is said to have flown from his last known location in Singapore, according to Korean authorities, to an unknown location. In the rigorous interview released this week, he maintained that his limited disclosure on the same doesn’t mean he is hiding away from authorities, rather keeping safe from anonymous investors that have blamed him for their losses in personal threats he has been receiving.
Conceited persona and more absurd claims
Kwon insisted that he is keen to cooperate with authorities conducting an inquiry into Terra, specifically his involvement, However, he worries information about his residence would compromise his safety. He reiterated that authorities are yet to reach him on the matter and he only knows the much that the media have publicly reported. Forkast reports there are discussions among teams investigating Terra’s unfortunate crumble about the possibility of the international criminal fugitive being in Dubai or another third-world country.
“There’s no reason why any government official would believe we fled to Singapore […] I don’t know if they intended to mislead or if it was a simple mistake, but there’s just simply too many things that are not true that are coming from the Korean side,” the Terra head who has seemingly resolved to denial, deception and evasion, said.
Presently, there is no supporting evidence in the form of records of the controversial developer’s entry into the Gulf country.
No funds have been frozen
Local outlets reported earlier that Korean authorities asked the exchanges to freeze the Luna Foundation Guard-owned Bitcoin sum, equivalent to $65 million, received from addresses linked to the foundation. Clearing the air around reports of 3,313 BTC being frozen by the OKX and Kucoin exchanges after an alleged suspicious transaction in late September. Kwon retorted that none of the assets he or the LFG holds had been seized by the exchanges.
He disputed the same on Twitter, at the time, as the news spread and in the latest interview, presented that he would have ‘definitely noticed’ such an activity.
“There have been allegations that we moved LFG (Luna Foundation Guard) funds into a Gemini custody wallet and that it’s sitting there or something like that. All we did was to confirm a trade with a market maker and transfer the Bitcoin to an address on the market maker’s instruction,” he controverted.
Not so much regret from an apologetic Kwon
The Terra co-founder also said that while the firm’s tone and stance in response to the reaction of the broader crypto community, especially investors who lost large sums, has seemed self-justifying, it is not so. Kwon apologetically noted that he had just as much confidence, as the next bull, in UST’s stability and the project’s overall success before things went south.
He recognized that his belief, well expressed in his frequent arrogantly-phrased remarks on social media, influenced the public, leading some to bet huge on the project.
“It could seem with the way that we’ve been responding to allegations and news reports that we are being defensive but that is absolutely not the case.”
He showed an iota of uncharacteristic humility, owning up to the same and admitting that he was carried away at the height of the project’s boom hence his arrogant persona on Twitter.
“In retrospect, I should have held myself to a more stringent standard,” he conceded but shifted part of the blame to those engaging him.
The possibility of prosecution
A previous interview published by Coinage received heavy criticism from the Terra community as being a gimmick meant to paint him in a positive light. Regarding the outcome of the investigation, Kwon doesn’t expect to be charged by local authorities with any fraud crime. In his opinion, the charges submitted by Korean prosecutors fall outside the domestic Capital Markets Act, making them invalid.
He argued that the unequivocal position of Korea’s financial markets regulator (FSC) and, by extension, the government on cryptocurrencies is that they are not securities.
“We don’t think any of the charges pertaining to the CMA is applicable because the government stance has been that cryptocurrencies shouldn’t be governed by the CMA, that they are not securities,” he countered on the issue.” Those charges are [not legitimate and] are politically motivated.”
Kwon, who chalks down the May incident to a week protocol design and not ‘rug pull’ speculations, deplored the alleged efforts of regulators to create new regulations during the criminal investigation process. Earlier this month, he was ordered to surrender his passport within a two-week window period, which elapsed yesterday. In addition to potential deportation, Kwon could struggle to get it renewed if it is invalidated.
The Stanford graduate disclosed that a report being prepared by an on-chain analysis firm whose services were acquired to provide clarity on the foundation’s activities is set to be released in the coming weeks. Last week, the LFG communicated an update on its initial plans to compensate users in a tweet, citing litigation matters as the deterrent. The Terra chief-turned-fugitive clarified he had no additional information about the asset redistribution plan.
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