LUNA Founder Do Kwon Reacts To $40 M Frozen: “Good For Them”
Following an arrest warrant issued by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Joint Financial Securities Crime Investigation Team, authorities in that country moved on to freeze the assets of Terra (LUNA) founder Do Kwon. So far, crypto exchanges have frozen around $100 million from these platforms.
The investigation and manhunt for the LUNA Founder are being carried out by elements in South Korea with cooperation from the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). A week ago, the international criminal enforcement agency issued a “Red Notice”, an arrest warrant enforceable by any Interpol member, against Do Kwon.
The confiscated funds have been linked to the LUNA founder via the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), an entity created to protect the price of the failed stablecoin TerraUSD (UST). The funds were primarily in Bitcoin, amounting to over 8,000 BTC, and hold by a wallet on crypto exchanges OKX and KuCoin.
Do Kwon Deny Accusations, Not His Bitcoin?Via his personal Twitter account, the CEO of Terraform Labs and LUNA founder has denied the accusations. On several occasions, Do Kwon has responded to the arrest warrant and the confiscation of funds belonging to the LFG by claiming that there is no investigation against him.
When Interpol issued the “Red Notice”, Kwon replied with a screen capture from the international police agency’s website showing that his name was not present. Speaking about his whereabouts, the LUNA founder said:
I’m writing code in my living room (…). Yeah as I said I’m making zero effort to hide I go on walks and malls, no way none of CT (Crypto Twitter) hasn’t run into me the past couple weeks.
Now, the LUNA Founder denied once again that there are any funds attributable to him on OKX and KuCoin. Kwon claims he is not a user of these exchange platforms, and added:
Where Is Do Kwon? LUNA Founder Might Provide AnswersOnce again, I don’t even use Kucoin and OkEx, have no time to trade, no funds have been frozen. I don’t know whose funds they’ve frozen, but good for them, hope they use it for good.
As Bitcoin reported, Kwon has been accused of allegedly violating South Korea’s security laws by promoting an alleged security, cryptocurrency LUNA, and stablecoin UST. Kwon has hinted that the South Korean government might be “weaponizing state institutions” for their own benefit.
At its high, the total market cap for LUNA and UST surpassed $40 billion. When these digital assets collapsed and traded close to $0, a lot of users lost their funds, and the guilt was pointed to Terraform Labs and Kwon. The case gained a lot of attention in South Korea.
Thus, why the LUNA Founder claims that the country’s government is trying to build a case against him. In an interaction with reporter Laura Shin, Kwon emphasized this point and acknowledged that his Tweets about the investigation could backfire if he were to face charges in court.
However, Kwon is allegedly defending an important part of the “crypto movement”, a cause that he claims is important enough to omit his own safety. Via the social network he said:
Would probably make it much worse, but as you can see, self-preservation is not the dominant motivating factor. The crypto movement wins in truth and loses in falsehood – however this plays out I want to make sure false narratives don’t hurt an important learning opportunity
Shin invented Kwon for an interview on her program “Unchained Podcast”, the Terraform Labs CEO accepted the invitation and might provide more answers around the case, his whereabouts, and his overall perspective.
At the time of writing, LUNA (LUNC) trades at $0.0002 with a 5% loss in the last 24 hours.
LUNA’s price trends to the downside on the 4-hour chart. Source: LUNCUSDT TradingviewOhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Reynaldo Marquez, @Khareem Sudlow