Do Kwon Breaks Silence: ‘Terra-Luna…Was Essentially My Life’

The Terraform Labs CEO gives first interview to Coinage, discusses Terra failure

article-image

Do Kwon interviewed; Source: Coinage

share

key takeaways

  • “I’ve never thought about what could happen to me if this fails,” Kwon said
  • “I, and I alone, am responsible,” he said

The founder of Terra, Do Kwon, has kept largely out of the spotlight since his flagship project collapsed in May. But in a new interview with Zack Guzman for Coinage, the Terraform Labs CEO reflects on his current predicament.

Kwon justified his confidence, which he now admits “seems super irrational,” on the market success of his Terra ecosystem as it was “inching close to $100 billion.”

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

The Terra creator said there was likely an insider at Terraform Labs who took advantage of information on the protocol’s vulnerabilities to profit — although he does not name anyone — but added, “I, and I alone, am responsible for any weaknesses that could have been presented for a short seller to start to take profit.”

‘Down infinite’

While the paper billionaire cannot quantify his losses, Kwon described being “down infinite.”

“There are probably not too many people that are alive with this type of experience, but it’s like, over the past five years, I just lived and breathed Terra,” he said.

He said that Terra was not a Ponzi scheme, as the earliest investors were among the hardest hit by the crash. Kwon faces allegations of fraud in South Korea, among other potential legal jeopardy.

“So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to put out the the facts as we know them. We’re going to be totally honest and deal with whatever consequences as they may be,” he told Guzman.

Kwon, who moved to Singapore prior to the Terra crash, said he did so out of fear for the safety of his wife and child.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

Revenue estimates for the third quarter come in at $33 billion, which would be an 83% increase from the prior year

article-image

Senator Cynthia Lummis hopes a US strategic bitcoin reserve can be teed up for “adoption in 2025”

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value

article-image

Prosecutors argued that FTX co-founder Gary Wang cooperated in their case against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

article-image

The two largest crypto exchanges respectively run the second- and sixth-largest Solana validators

article-image

MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded — it now holds 1.7% of the asset’s circulating supply