As regulators investigate whether Do Kwon, who founded Terraform Labs, was running a Ponzi scheme in the wake of the shock demise of UST stablecoin and Luna government token last month, the embattled CEO fiercely defends his actions.
Kwon said in a recent interview that he was “devastated” by the dramatic collapse of dual tokens and hopes that investors who were affected by the tragic events that followed when his inventions became virtually worthless are “taking care of themselves and those that they love.”
“There is a difference between failing and committing fraud”
Terra Implosion will be remembered as one of the darkest moments in the history of cryptocurrencies. Most people have accused Kwon of masterminding an elaborate crypto fraud scheme that caused investors to lose billions of dollars in wealth.
However, the creator of Terra says that he really believed in the project and that its failure was an honest deficit, not a prolonged and sophisticated hoax.
“I made safe bets and made safe statements on behalf of UST because I believed in their resilience and their value proposition. I have since lost these bets, but my actions 100% match my words. There is a difference between failing and committing fraud,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Kwon became a crypto billionaire earlier this year following the meteoric rally of LUNA and UST. By April, LUNA had soared past $118 on major cryptocurrency exchanges and its paper value had ballooned to $40 billion. Five weeks later, it dropped to zero. The implosion of the twin tokens, he said, resulted in the loss of almost all of his net worth. However, he is supposedly thrifty and losing a large portion of his total assets “doesn’t bother him.”
Kwon has ‘great confidence‘ in rebuilding Terra Network from the ashes
Hundreds of thousands of Terra investors painfully witnessed their holdings evaporate days after the spectacular crash. Not surprisingly, Kwon and Terraform Labs have been the subject of multiple lawsuits in the United States and also in South Korea following the UST cataclysm.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also launched an investigation to determine whether the South Korean businessman violated federal investor protection laws through the trading of UST.
The plan to get Terra back on track is already underway. After the hard fork in May, Terra launched a new blockchain without the UST stablecoin in an attempt to prevent the ecosystem from fading into obscurity.
In the interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kwon stated that he has “great confidence in our ability to rebuild even stronger than we ever were.” “Many builders are in the process of relaunching their applications on the new chain”, summed up the co-founder of Terra.