Prosecutors in South Korea have filed charges against Daniel Shin, the co-founder of Terraform Labs (the firm behind Terra USD) alongside Do Kwon, who was recently arrested while traveling through Europe.
Daniel Shin Is Facing Charges in South Korea
Shin is the man – aside from Kwon – who reportedly brought Terra USD to life. The currency and the respective company behind it came crashing down in the summer of last year in what was believed to be the first major casualty (at that time) of the crypto winter that oversaw most of 2022, but there is evidence to suggest something more sinister occurred.
Terra USD was considered an algorithmic stable coin, meaning it didn’t have any collateral (i.e., gold, fiat currencies, etc.) supporting it. The only thing ensuring its “stable” condition was the fact that traders seemed to believe in it.
Either this belief vanished very fast or something shady happened because in the summer of 2022, the currency broke down like an old car and roughly $40 billion in investor funds vanished without a trace. Everyone lost their wealth in a matter of seconds, and the currency was no more.
At first, it seemed like the crypto winter was getting worse, but then news came about that Kwon and many of the executives working on Terra USD transferred much of their funds into BTC just weeks before the crash was recorded.
Many authorities felt that the company men knew the enterprise was about to come crashing down or that this was a rug pull of some sort. In any case, they took it like investors were going to get slapped in the face while those in charge would not experience any repercussions.
Kwon instantly became a fugitive when authorities decided to issue a warrant for his arrest, though according to his social pages, this never occurred, and his fugitive status was something concocted by the mainstream media. He said he was busy coding in his living room and that he was more than willing to cooperate with the police.
He was arrested just a few months ago while trying to board a plan in Montenegro, a small European country. He was caught with various phony IDs, which makes one wonder if perhaps the fugitive status is, indeed, real.
Wasn’t Involved?
Now, it looks like Shin is next. Heck, they both shared offices together. Perhaps now they can share an eight-by-nine cell. As many as ten separate individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the collapse of the Terra USD platform. They – along with Shin – are facing fraud charges and have been accused of violating capital-markets laws and regulations surrounding electronic transactions and fundraising.
Lawyers for Shin say he left Terra in 2020, and thus wasn’t part of the crash.