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Laura Shin Asks Terra’s Do Kwon The Tough Questions. What Did We Learn?

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

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

Terra’s commitment to filling up its coffers with Bitcoin has been solidified once more with another $1.5 billion purchase. This is the fruit of a pledge that the project had made to buy more than $10 billion worth of BTC to serve as a reserve for its stablecoin, UST. More importantly, though is how this boosts the foundation’s standing when it comes to corporations holding the digital asset. 

Terra Now Holds More BTC Than Tesla

Before Terra had begun its bitcoin buying spree, there have been other corporate bodies that had already made the plunge to do so. The likes of MicroStrategy, Galaxy Digital, and Tesla come to mind when thinking of this. While MicroStrategy had cemented its lead as the company with the largest BTC holdings, Tesla had retained its position in second place. That is, until now.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Institutional Outflows Near One-Year Highs, More Downside Coming?

With its most recent buy, Terra has now become the second-largest corporate bitcoin holder, beating out Tesla for the title. The deal was carried out as an over-the-counter (OTC) purchase in conjunction with cryptocurrency broker Genesis and Three Arrows Capital, a crypto trading and venture capital firm.

The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) which had begun accumulating BTC earlier this year has ramped up its buying. It is one of the fastest accumulation trends of any corporate bitcoin holder. Its first purchase had taken place in February, and now, barely three months later, the non-profit foundation now holds 80,393 total BTC. All of which come out to a dollar value of $2.9 billion at the time of its last purchase. It now holds almost double what Tesla holds, which currently sits at 48,000 BTC.

Reiterating The Promise

When Do Kwon, founder of Terra, had announced that the foundation was planning to buy $10 billion worth of BTC for its treasury, the question had been when. While participants in the space had speculated it would take a while before they began buying the coins, Terra had quickly moved forward to start. It had gradually added BTC to its treasury and in three months has now purchased more than a quarter of the $10 billion BTC.

BTC falls below $36,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

In an additional move, Terra had also moved to add another cryptocurrency to its treasury. This time around turning to Avalanche (AVAX) to do so. It had purchased a total of $200 million worth of AVAX, a trade that was carried out directly with the Avalanche Foundation.

Related Reading | Bitcoin ETP Outflows Spell Bearish Sentiment Among Institutional Investors

The Luna Foundation Guard reserves have now grown to $3.23 billion. Bitcoin makes up 90.7% of the reserves with a total of 80,393 BTC valued at $2.93 billion. LUNA makes up the second-largest portion with $126.63 million making up 4.2%, AVAX at 3.5%, USDT AT 0.8%, and USDC at 0.7%.

Featured image from Portal do Bitcoin, chart from TradingView.com

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Inside Terra’s $2.38 Billion Reserves, What Made The Lineup?

Terra (LUNA) has been aggressive about filling up its reserves with trusted cryptocurrencies to serve as a backup for its stablecoin UST. This has evolved over time to include a number of various cryptocurrencies that now make up its reserves sitting at $2.38 billion. This is still a long way from where the Luna Foundation plans for its reserves to be, making it a work in progress. In this report, we take a look at these reserve currencies and the portion allocated to each one.

Diving Into Terra’s Reserves

As mentioned previously, Terra’s crypto reserves have gone up to as high as $2.38 billion since it first announced it was starting the reserves. Luna Foundation Guard has been putting more money into its Bitcoin reserves, which it plans to get to at least $10 billion in BTC with time. This makes the pioneer cryptocurrency the largest of the holdings in this regard. Although there are other cryptocurrencies that mark the lineup, bringing the total to four.

Related Reading | ADA To Rebound With Integration Of USDT And USDC On Cardano?

Following behind Bitcoin are the ERC-20 tokens which combined make up the second-largest percentage of the reserves at 23.2%. These are both stablecoins USDC and USDT, coming out to a total of $549.80 million of these tokens serving as reserves for USDT. 

Additionally, Terra’s native token, Luna, also makes the list of reserves used by the network. It accounts for 7.2% of all reserves with a dollar figure of $172.20 million and a total token balance of 2.25 million Luna tokens. 

The foundation recently purchased an additional 123.89 BTC to add to its reserves bringing its total to 42.53K BTC. This put Bitcoin in the large majority at 69.6% of all reserves, coming out to a total dollar value of $1.66 billion.

Where’s AVAX?

Last week, it was announced that Terra would add AVAX to its reserves as a way to combat the rising competition. This came as a result of a collaboration between Avalanche Foundation, Terraform Labs, and the Luna Foundation Guard who had said they would be purchasing about $200 million worth of AVAX to add to its reserves. 

Related Reading | Bitcoin Clings To $40K On Easter Sunday As Crypto Seen To Head Lower In The Short Term

Do Kwon, founder of Terra, had explained that the decision to add AVAX to Terra’s reserves had been fueled by the loyalty to the network. However, a look at LFG’s reserves shows that there is no AVAX in sight. This could easily mean that the foundation is yet to add AVAX to its reserves.

However, per the deal with Avalanche Foundation, both the Avalanche Foundation and Terraform Labs currently hold $100 million worth of AVAX each, while the Avalanche Foundation now holds $100 million worth of LUNA and $100 million worth of UST.

Featured image from CryptoSlate, chart from TradingView.com