Do Kwon, the founder of Terra, made a long-awaited appearance in an exclusive interview on October 18 with renowned author and crypto journalist Laura Shin.
Since the Terra Blowout in May this year, Shin, host of the Unchained podcasts, has posed some challenging questions to the evasive founder.
The stablecoin UST and crypto asset LUNA of the Terra Ecosystem collapsed in a matter of days, wiping out the savings of countless people on May 12.
Do Kwon was first questioned about the Red Notice that Interpol had issued calling for his arrest. In response, Kwon said he was waiting for confirmation and refuted having obtained a copy of the arrest warrant.
He expressed his dissatisfaction with the Financial Services Commission of South Korea, for “creating new regulations through criminal enforcement proceedings.”
Calling the charges “illegitimate and politically motivated,” Do Kwon said he is complying with all the document requests made by the South Korean prosecutors.
He then mentioned how he had to deal with one of the worst effects of the collapse: investors losing billions of dollars across the globe. On one occasion, Shin asked Kwon how he felt about the suicide of an investor who lost his life savings, Kwon looked upset and expressed remorse.
I own up to the responsibility fully. It’s not easy — the hardest thing about the current situation is having to contend with so much astronomical loss. It’s quite hard to put into words, but the scale of the financial and emotional and economic damage that happened here is not easy to live.
The terra founder brushed aside reports of cashing out just before the event, calling them “too much misinformation”.
When Shin confronted him with on-chain evidence of 65 million worth of BTC being deposited on KuCoin and OKEx, Kwon retorted that transferring Bitcoin does not always imply selling on spot exchanges and that his auditing firm would soon come out with a report on the same.
Do Kwon Comes Clean On His “Cocky Attitude”
Do Kwon was also accused of having a “cocky attitude” which became notorious during his time on social media. He said he got “carried away with crypto Twitter” and “looking back now it seemed cringe”. But refuse to delete his controversial tweets or posts.
He further appealed to developers to learn from their errors while continuing to work on developing decentralized money that is “more robust, more transparent, and resistant to failure” in addition to being censorship-resistant.
