Do Kwon grants first interview since Terra crash + other major crypto updates this week

The events of May 2022 in the crypto space are still very fresh in many people’s minds. Predominant among them is the collapse of the Terra ecosystem that followed the de-pegging of the UST stablecoin and the Terra Luna’s price crash. The crash led to investors losing around $45 billion within a few weeks.

On Monday, Do Kwon, the CEO of Terraform Labs – the crypto ecosystem behind the debacle – after months of hiding in Singapore and a trail of comments on social media finally appeared in public for his first interview since the project’s implosion.

The Terra drama seems not to be ending anytime soon. Two days after the interview, a news report came out that Do Kwon has hired South Korean counsel in preparation for a legal battle. 

And, in what looks like a farce, a crypto hedge fund manager has claimed to have lost $450,000 to a porn virus. I mean, how are you going to explain to investors that their hard-earned funds crashed in the process of you jacking off to some internet adult content? 

Interesting things are happening. 

Do Kwon grants first interview after Terra crash

During a wide-ranging interview with former CNBC reporter Zack Guzman, Do Kwon said that he alone was responsible for the downfall of the popular Terra crypto project. 

He acknowledges that he was the person who presented the “vulnerabilities” that resulted in the multi-billion-dollar crash. According to him, he made a series of big bets that ultimately didn’t pay off in the end.

This led to the crash of LUNA’s price from the highs of close to $120 in early May to the lows of mere pennies.

Do Kwon said:

“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.”

He admitted that he had an “entertaining alter ego”. Kwon also insists that he has never shorted any cryptocurrency in his entire life (let alone the cryptocurrencies from the Terra ecosystem), rejecting the rumours that he himself profited from the epic crash. 

The controversial developer says that he himself burned through most of his net worth within several days when LUNA and UST spiralled toward zero back in May. However, due to the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, it is almost impossible to verify whether or not Kwon’s claims are legit. 

…hires a legal team

Days after appearing in public, Do Kwon has reportedly hired a new team of lawyers in South Korea in anticipation of a legal battle, according to a Wednesday report.

The report from the local Korean news outlet Naver claims that Kwon submitted a letter of appointment to the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office, which is currently investigating both Kwon and Terraform Labs.

As the report specifies:

“He is said to have recently submitted a letter of appointment to an attorney at the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office.”

Recall that the Terra founder earlier in the week said he hadn’t been contacted by South Korean authorities, and neither have they pressed any charges against him.

Elon Musk joke pumps fake MUFC token 

Moments after the world’s richest man, Elon Musk jokingly tweeted that he would buy Manchester United on Wednesday, a fake token that claimed to be linked to the football club surged tremendously. 

The $MUFC token rallied 3,000% shortly after the tweet. However, the rally was short-lived as Musk cleared the air that he was only joking after he was asked to state his seriousness. 

“No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I’m not buying any sports team,” he said.  

Meanwhile, his previous comments have already done a lot of good to the value of the MUFC token. According to data on Binance-based decentralized exchange PooCoin, $MUFC rose to a high of $0.01889 on the day after Musk joked about MUFC. 

However, the price of the token has fallen below $0.0001019 at press time after it became clear that the world’s richest man’s tweet was a prank. 

The fake MUFC token was launched in August 2021 by a group of supporters of the top English Premier League club. The cryptocurrency gained prominence after the team behind its development airdropped 10 million units of the token to MUFC supporters. 

Fund manager claims he lost crypto due to a porn virus

Former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli has claimed that the massive crash of his cryptocurrency dubbed Martin Shkreli Inu (MSI) was due to a hack that emanated from an attempt to download a pornography file. 

This comes after the token plunged by over 90% following a dump from a crypto wallet linked to Shkreli. The wallet offloaded its holdings for 239 ETH, approximately $450,000. Interestingly, the dump occurred after the token had attained a weekly high.

According to Etherscan, a crypto wallet account dubbed 0xshkreli.eth transferred over 160 billion tokens to an unidentified wallet on August 12 before $MSI crashed.

In response to an investigation by YouTuber SomeOrdinaryGamers run by Muta Anas, Shkreli stated that the token dump emerged after malware infected his computer while attempting to download adult content material.

Shkreli, convicted of defrauding investors, shared the alleged file with the YouTuber, which contained a 700MB screensaver. According to him, the content enabled the hackers to deploy a remote trojan and gained access to his personal information, including the keys to the crypto wallet.

South Korea goes after 16 crypto exchanges 

South Korea is toughening its stance on foreign crypto exchanges.

The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU), part of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC), yesterday announced that 16 virtual asset providers have been offering services to Koreans without obtaining the required licenses. 

KoFIU said it had notified the country’s investigative authority and requested that domestic access to their websites be blocked. It has also informed its counterparts in the respective countries of the businesses’ origin. 

These non-compliant entities are said to have targeted Korean customers with Korean-language websites and by running promotional events targeting local customers.

The agency warned that unregistered crypto exchanges lack some security protections mandated by Korean law. This, it posited, could expose users to hacking and personal information breaches.

The exchanges to be hamstrung by the Korean authorities include, KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex, XT.com, Bitrue, ZB.com, Bitglobal, CoinW, CoinEX, AAX, ZoomEX, Poloniex, BTCEX, BTCC, DigiFinex, and Poloniex.

Unregistered crypto exchange operators face imprisonment of up to five years or a fine of 50 million South Korea Won, the equivalent of around $37,000.

Here is all from us for this week. See you next week!