LFG foundation Archives

This is the Do Kwon interview everyone was waiting for. In the latest episode of Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast, titled ‘It Was Never Really About Money or Fame or Success’, the Terra creator faces serious scrutiny. Do Kwon denounces media misinformation, denies several serious charges and gives a play-by-play explanation of the organization’s movements during the crash. And he sweats bullets.

Laura Shin did her homework, and relentlessly puts forward the questions most Terra investors have. She does this in a non-threatening, extremely professional way. Do Kwon answers all of her questions. Some better than others, but the man does show his face and answers, which is a lot. Compassionately, Laura Shin also gives Do Kwon a second opportunity to say sorry to Terra’s affected investors and their families. He would’ve come across much worse if she hadn’t offered that second chance.

The episode’s intro says:

“Do Kwon, cofounder of Terraform Labs, discusses the charges against him, gives a message to Terra victims, answers allegations about potential fraud and non-transparent business practices.”

This is the video:

This Do Kwon interview is one for the books, everybody interested in the subject should watch it. Let’s bring out the bullet points and analyze this phenomenal piece of media.

Do Kwon On His Location And “On The Run” Status

He claims he doesn’t live in South Korea anymore and he’s not planning to return to face the alleged charges. He plans to appeal, though.
Do Kwon hasn’t seen a copy of the arrest warrant.
Apparently, cryptocurrencies are securities in South Korea.
His team has been cooperating with South Korean authorities, fulfilling the court requests for different documents.
Do Kwon refuses to reveal his current location because of the difficulties it brings to his living situation. He denies he’s on the run.
He denied frozen funds at the KuCoin and OKX exchanges belong to him, Terraform Labs, or the LFG foundation.

The most important news Do Kwon reveals, though, is that the organization is working with a chain analysis firm to produce a paper on their trading activities. “They should be publishing a report shortly, which I think is going to provide a lot more clarity,” he said. Do Kwon promised the report in “the next couple of weeks.”

LUNA price chart on Kraken | Source: LUNA/USD on TradingView.com
Terra Was a Failure But It Was Not A Scam

Do Kwon claims that his online persona was an alter ego and confesses that he got carried away with the “sh*tposting.”
Terra’s failure was caused by the protocol’s “weakness to respond to the cruelty of the markets.”
He admits to a lot of technical and theoretical mistakes but denies Terra was a scam.
Do Kwon claims that the Anchor developers/ whistleblowers that came forward denouncing the protocol were only interns. Not a line of their code appears in the final product, and this is apparent in GitHub.
Admits to the SDT premine of $1.4B. This was a second stablecoin that the Terra organization used to maintain the UST peg to the dollar. This stablecoin wasn’t even mentioned in the Terra whitepaper. According to Do Kwon, this was because they hadn’t conceived SDT when they wrote it. He claims Terra’s is an “academic whitepaper” and wasn’t supposed to cover all of the technologies’ use cases.
Do Kwon admits they were using market operations to maintain the UST peg to the dollar. In fact, he says this was always the idea. The burning and minting of LUNA was not the only procedure that was supposed to maintain the peg.

Do Kwon And The Other Admissions

Apparently, Terra and Chai haven’t been working together for a long time.
When asked about faking Chai’s numbers and interactions registered in the Terra blockchain, Do Kwon said that the numbers came from Chai. According to him, they were probably “distancing themselves” from the Terra situation but still using the blockchain.

When asked about his participation in Basis Cash, a failed algorithmic stablecoin, Do Kwon distanced himself from the situation. He was just founding the team, but had nothing to do with the actual project. “Basis Cash is not something that I designed or operated. It’s something that I encouraged,” Do Kwon said.
When asked about if he was planning to compensate Terra investors from his own pocket, Do Kwon said, “my personal funds are not significant enough to make a difference.”
He still believes the world needs to work towards a decentralized future and that we need censorship-resistant money.

As for his future plans, Do Kwon says he plans to continue building “highly experimental” projects in the crypto space.

Featured Image: Do Kwon and Laura Shin, screenshot from the video interview | Charts by TradingView

The Terra / Luna / UST collapse keeps on generating headlines. This time, we’ll use the data in ARK’s “The Bitcoin Monthly” report to establish its impact on the bitcoin ecosystem. Remember that the non-profit organization LFG, AKA as the Luna Foundation Guard, was accumulating BTC to defend UST’s peg to the dollar. In a then-delated May interview, Terra’s Do Kwon said that they were trying to get to $1B in BTC so that “besides Satoshi, we will be the largest single holder of Bitcoin in the world.” He also proclaimed, “within the crypto industry, the failure of UST is equivalent to the failure of crypto itself.”

Related Reading | Terra Beats Tesla As Second-Largest Corporate Bitcoin Holder After $1.5B Purchase

At one point, it appeared that BTC and UST destinies were inextricably linked, but the bitcoin network absorbed the collapse nearly unscathed. Let’s look at ARK’s numbers and try to figure out how it did it.

Terra, The Largest L-1 Blockchain Failure Ever

At this point, everybody knows what happened with Terra. Nobody knows how it happened, though. Was it a coordinated attack or did the natural market’s forces trigger the death spiral event? We wouldn’t know, but the fact of the matter is that the UST de-pegged from the dollar causing a bank run in the Anchor protocol, and the eventual demise of the algorithmic stablecoin and its twin, LUNA.

How big was the collapse? According to ARK’s report:

“In addition to causing the crash in UST and Luna, we believe Terra is the largest layer-1 blockchain failure in crypto history, wiping out a combined $60 billion of market capitalization between UST and Luna.”

Huge in size by any metric, but, how does it compare to previous crypto collapses? The only comparable collapse was “the Mt. Gox hack that stole 5.7% of total crypto market cap in 2014, Terra’s collapse destroyed roughly 2.7% of crypto’s total market capitalization.” The Mt. Gox hack almost destroyed the bitcoin network at a time when it was more vulnerable. The Terra collapse felt like a breeze in comparison, but, as the numbers show, it wasn’t.

BTC price chart for 06/07/2022 on Eightcap | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
How Did The Terra Collapse Affect BTC?

Besides the LFG foundation reportedly selling its 80K BTC, the collapse created extreme selling pressure on bitcoin. According to the report, “exchanges recorded net inflows of 52,000 bitcoin, the largest daily inflow in BTC terms since November 2017 and the largest inflow ever in USD terms.” These are notable numbers.

Bitcoin Net Flows To and From Exchanges | Source: ARK’s “The Bitcoin Monthly”

According to the bitcoin blockchain, the account associated with “LFG currently holds 313 BTC, down from 80,934 BTC held prior to Terra’s unraveling”. Did they sell the rest, though? Nobody knows for sure. Back to the report:

“To backstop UST’s peg, The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) reportedly sold most of its ~80,000-bitcoin reserves, contributing to this record inflow.”

Surprising even hardcore bitcoiners, the network resisted this massive sell-off without breaking a sweat. Sure, bitcoin’s price suffered, but the blow wasn’t even close to being fatal. And ARK’s prediction reflects that fact, “now decoupled from the Terra blockchain, bitcoin’s selling pressure should subside, yet contagion in the crypto markets is still inconclusive.” Why? Because “bitcoin’s more secure and conservative blockchain should gain market share.”

Are Algorithmic Stablecoins Even Possible?

To answer this we’ll quote NYDIG’s report “On Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” which comes with the subtitle, “a post-mortem on Terra, a pre-mortem on DeFi, and a glimpse of the madness to come.” As the titles gave away, NYDIG believes that not algorithmic stablecoins nor DeFi as it currently stands are possible. Why? Well…

“No matter how well intentioned, all algorithmic stablecoins will fail and the vast majority – possibly all – of DeFi’s current versions will fail, where “fail” here means not gaining sufficient critical mass to matter, being hacked, blowing up, or being altered by regulation to the point of non-viability. In the end, the Terra project could control the supply of its money, but it couldn’t make its people value it. A printing press was the only (non)answer. Sound familiar? Lacking a lender of last resort, DeFi (re)creates the problems solved by central banks. Bitcoin solves the problems created by central banks.”

Related Reading | TerraLabs Sold Over 80,000 BTC To Rescue Its Stablecoin

As it usually happens, we could summarize this whole article with the old adage: “Bitcoin fixes this.”

Featured Image by Louis Maniquet on Unsplash | Charts by TradingView