Do Kwon dismisses allegation of cashing out $2.7B from LUNA, UST

Published at: June 12, 2022

Do Kwon, the CEO and co-founder of the infamous Terra (LUNA) and TerraUSD (UST) ecosystems, refuted the claims of cashing out $80 million every month for nearly three years.

Numerous unconfirmed reports surfaced on Saturday, claiming Kwon’s participation in draining liquidity out of Luna Classic (LUNC) and TerraUSD Classic (USTC), before the crash to purchase United States dollar-pegged stablecoin such as Tether (USDT).

Rumors about Kwon cashing out LUNA and UST reserves surfaced after a Twitter thread by FatManTerra shared the alleged details on how Kwon, along with Terra influencers, managed to drain funds while artificially maintaining the liquidity.

Some of you thought $80m per month was bad. That's nothing. Here's how Do Kwon cashed out $2.7 billion (33 x $80m!) over the span of mere months thanks to Degenbox: the perfect mechanism to drain liquidity out of the LUNA & UST system and into hard money like USDT. (1/13)

— FatMan (@FatManTerra) June 11, 2022

However, the entrepreneur advised the crypto community to steer away from fueling the rumor until it was proven true:

“This should be obvious, but the claim that I cashed out $2.7B from anything is categorically false.”

Sharing his side of the story, Kwon stated that the recent rumor of cashing out $80 million per month contradicts the claims that he still holds most of his LUNA holdings, procured during the airdrop. Moreover, Kwon further reiterated that his income over the past two years has only been a cash salary from TerraForm Labs (TFL).

3/ To reiterate, for the last two years the only thing ive earned is a nominal cash salary from TFL, and deferred taking most of my founder’s tokens because a) didn’t need it and b) didn’t want to cause unnecessary finger pointing of “he has too much”

— Do Kwon (@stablekwon) June 12, 2022

Kwon told the community that “spreading falsehood” adds to the pain of all LUNA investors, remarking that:

“I didn’t say much because I don’t want to seem like playing victim, but I lost most of what I had in the crash too. I’ve said this multiple times but I really don’t care about money much.”

Mr. B, a developer from Anchor Protocol — a Terra-centric sub-ecosystem — allegedly warned Kwon about the unrealistic high-interest rates. Mr. B said that the platform was designed only to offer an interest rate of 3.6% for keeping the Terra ecosystem stable but was changed to 20% just before the release:

“I thought it was going to collapse from the beginning (I designed it), but it collapsed 100%.”

The developer allegedly suggested to Kwon about lowering the interest rates but the request was refused. Do Kwon has been summoned to attend a parliamentary hearing on the matter in South Korea.