Despite facing the music over the Terra fiasco, Do Kwon seems to be quite optimistic about the future. The CEO of Terraform Labs recently expressed “great confidence” in rebuilding the empire that crashed last month. Notwithstanding the crypto-market’s recent bearish trajectory.
Despite running into trouble with furious investors in loss and multiple government investigations, Do Kwon recently told The Wall Street Journal,
“I have great confidence in our ability to build back even stronger than we once were.”
After the collapse of LUNA and its stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), the blockchain was given a new form in a rebirth proposal supported by 65.5% of votes. Passed in late May, the proposal led the way for a new blockchain called Terra, while the old version was renamed Terra Classic.
In fact, according to Kwon, a multitude of developers are now working to relaunch apps on the new chain.
Trials and tribulations
A full-fledged recovery plan, however, failed to ward off all the problems. The South Korean entrepreneur has been accused of fraud and illegal fundraising by many. Investigations on the same are reportedly being run by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office.
A lawsuit was also filed less than a week ago by a Chicago investor who suffered losses in the Terra episodes. The class-action lawsuit accused Kwon and Terraform Labs of selling unregistered securities. The other firms that were indicted in the same include Jump Crypto, Jump Trading and Three Arrows Capital. The lawsuit claimed that the two assets that imploded last month resembled securities and were promoted via misleading information.
“On top of selling unregistered securities with the Terra Tokens, Defendants made a series of false and misleading statements regarding the largest Terra ecosystem digital assets by market cap, UST and LUNA, in order to induce investors into purchasing these digital assets at inflated rates.”
Terraform Labs tagged the lawsuit as meritless and confirmed that it intends to defend itself. However, that is not all for Kwon and his company. Back in May, law firm LKB & Partners sued him on behalf of investors who lost money in the UST collapse. As there were affected investors inside the firm too, a lawsuit was filed at the Financial Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
Recently, the financial crimes unit of Korea also blocked current as well as former Terra developers from leaving the country. According to reports, the travel embargo was placed keeping in mind additional investigative actions such as search, seizures, and subpoenas for the persons involved.
A LUNAtic move
Many in the crypto-community are of the belief that Do Kwon is running a sophisticated scam. Quantum Economics’ Mati Greenspan, for instance, fails to understand how “anybody in their right mind would want to invest in LUNA 2 after watching LUNA 1 blow up so dramatically.”
The new LUNA, which started off at $18.87 on 28 May, is now changing hands at $1.98 as per CoinGecko.
Cory Klippsten, the CEO of cryptocurrency firm Swan Bitcoin, was quoted calling Kwon “a fraudster” in the WSJ article. Rejecting this characterization, Kwon clarified the difference between failing and running a fraud, saying –
“I made confident bets and made confident statements on behalf of UST because I believed in its resilience and its value proposition. I’ve since lost these bets, but my actions 100% match my words. There is a difference between failing and running a fraud.”
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