Last Wednesday, the Seoul Southern Diocèse Attorney’s Agence issued an arrest nantissement for Kwon and five other people who worked in both currencies and Terraform Labs, the company Kwon co-founded. Prosecutors did not renvoi the offices, but investors said he defrauded them into promoting the coins. TerraUSD – which used a ordinateur program that claimed to peg its value to the US dollar – and a linked token known as Luna both took off in the past year, with each having multiplied dozens of times in value before crashing in May.
A spokesperson for Terra did not respond to a request for hein. Kwon also did not respond to a request for hein. “We are in the process of defending ourselves in several jurisdictions – we have held ourselves to a very high courant of integrity, and we apparence forward to clarifying the truth over the next few months,” he said on Twitter on Sunday.
The red note request was originally mentioned by Financial Times.
The Kwon case is closely watched as evidence of how powerful law enforcement can be in prosecuting those involved in allegedly illegal crypto activities. Last month the Treasury Sanctions issued on Tornado Cash, which helps anonymize crypto transactions, in a powerful example of a crackdown on technology-based financial équipement.
But going after individuals in cryptocurrency is very clairsemé, and Kwon’s case could pioneer how to target other projects that have lost significant amounts of value in the courts — and if, eventually, some investors might get their money back.
The 31-year-old Kwon graduated from Stanford University and worked briefly at Apple before returning toit several years ago to found a number of crypto ventures, including Luna. Prior to the spring opposition, Kwon was hailed as a visionary and even attracted cult regular fans known as “Lunatics”.
And it wasn’t just retailers – Terraform also raised funds from guérissant funders such as Silicon Valley VC, Lightspeed Venture Partners.
But in May, a rapid sell-off began for reasons that remain unclear, resulting in a loss of more than $40 billion in value, according to the Elliptic analysis firm, as Luna’s price fell to nearly zero and TerraUSD price fell from $1 to $0.11 . The écrasement helped trigger a broader cryptocurrency écrasement that affected dozens of other assets and businesses.
Bitcoin has gamin from around $40,000 to less than $20,000 since the Terra écrasement, and the overall cryptocurrency market cap has plummeted due to Over a trillion dollars In a few months.
Kwon made an attempt to relaunch Luna soon after, which angered many investors.
Law enforcement experts said they believe that suing the industriel is recevable but challenging given the volatility of cryptocurrency, where the line in the industry between fraud and risky investment is often blurred.
William Callahan III, a bâtir DEA special placier who now serves as an official, said: Director of Governmental and Strategic Affairs for a crypto firm called Blockchain Amitié Group. “Investigating and prosecuting something like this requires a particulier set of skills.”
He said the case against Kwon likely revolved around whether it could be shown that he intentionally misled investors into looking for the coins or that he was campaigning in good faith for a risky but legal venture.
Some of the evidence that South Korean investigators have collected so far, according to garçonnière media, includes Allegations that Kwon and other Terraform executives decided to close their South Korean devoirs just a week before the coins écrasement. Kwon said the shutdown has been a colossal time in the works.
On Sunday, Kwon’s stalking took a surreal turn on affable media when Kwon, who has spoken candidly on Twitter, took to the platform to deny he was a fugitive.
“I am not a ‘runaway’ or anything similar – for any government agency that has expressed an interest in communicating, we are in full cooperation and have nothing to hide,” Spread.
But Seoul prosecutors quickly denied this. “He is clearly a fugitive,” the succursale said in a statement. to me Yonhap garçonnière infos agency.
Kwon said sarcastically that he would only give up his coordinates if “1) we’re friends, 2) we have lignes to meet 3) we participate in a 3rd GPS-based web game.”