Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon’s first post-collapse interview: There was an insider who crashed the system

The CEO of Terraform Labs broke his long silence after the UST collapse, admitting in a new interview that he overestimated his project, which was not robust enough. This is Do Kwon’s first extensive interview since the collapse of UST/LUNA, where the founder of scandalous projects tried to justify himself to the general public.

Highlights from the interview

During an interview with Coinage Media co-founder Zack Guzman, Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon said that UST was intended to be a robust and flexible new type of stablecoin (editor’s note — it’s an algorithmic stablecoin that is software-driven).

A couple of months after the market crash, Kwon admits that his confidence was “super irrational” while he was infected by the initial success of the Terra ecosystem as its capitalization approached $100 billion.

“I’ve never thought about what could happen to me if this fails,” Kwon said.

The head of Terraform Labs also revised many of his previous statements about the stablecoin market — he now understands that the crypto market is much more complicated than he imagined.

To accusations of a scam, he argues that the Terra project was not planned as a Ponzi scheme because everyone believed in the project, and the first investors, who held assets until the last, suffered the most from the collapse. Although the billionaire cannot quantify his personal losses, Kwon described them as “limitless.”

The Terra creator said there was probably an insider at Terraform Labs who took advantage of information about protocol vulnerabilities to make a profit (which he did by crashing the system). Kwon added that it was his personal fault anyway without naming anyone else by name.

The legal status of the former CEO is also uncertain — it is not clear whether he is hiding from the authorities investigating in his home country. The founder of Terraform Labs was asked if he plans on returning to Korea from Singapore, where he has been staying now. 

 “It’s kind of hard to make that decision, because we’ve never been in touch with the investigators. They’ve never charged us with anything.”

Community reaction

Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon has gathered quite a lot of hate. Since many people lost their money because of the Terra collapse, his new interview was also met with quite an aggressive response.

The one who got the most abuse was Twitter influencer Fatman, who attacked Do Kwon like this:

Do, why not have an interview with someone more neutral and respectable like Bloomberg or Fortune instead of someone who has been consistently shilling you for *years*, almost as if he’s paid? And will you address the billions you cashed out of the system?

The public continues to suspect that the founder of Terra is hiding from an honest conversation, choosing media loyal to him, and also hiding his fortune, which he may have made from the collapse of his empire.

Note that many experts have previously argued that Terra’s collapse was a coordinated external attack that played on the weaknesses of this algorithmic stablecoin. Terra’s creator hinted at this exact scenario in an interview, referring to an insider, but refrained from giving details.

For many, it is also strange that the founder left for Singapore just before Terra collapsed, after which there were arrests and investigations in his home country.  His legal status in this regard is still unclear. The cautious apology of the CEO — who collapsed a huge market and is still outlawed — makes the victims of the collapse even angrier.