Do Kwon, the co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, the firm behind the development of the imploded Terra blockchain, recently sat with Laura Shin of Unchained in an exclusive interview.
During the interview, Kwon was asked the questions on everyone’s mind and opened up in a way that he hasn’t since early May. He also stated that he’s not ready to reveal his location at the moment.
The recap of the conversation between Do Kwon and Laura Shin can be found below, including the timestamp of each question and answer.
Note: Some of these quotes have been edited for clarity. But the substance of the quotes has not been altered.
Read Also: Do Kwon Speaks On the Chance of Burning His Terra Classic (LUNC) Holdings
Topic: Interpol Red Notice & Return to South Korea
-
Do Kwon: “Just to set the facts straight, we made a request to check on the status of the red notice. First, as far as I understand it, it is not an international arrest warrant and it states so explicitly on this website. The second point of clarification is I haven’t been living in South Korea, so it wouldn’t be accurate to say returning to South Korea. The more accurate point would be: would I travel to South Korea?”
-
Laura Shin: “Yes, and I agree with you that I reached out to Interpol twice to request confirmation about the red notice and have not heard anything.”
-
Timestamp: 3:19
Topic: Do on the Korean Capital Markets Act, and if the Act applies to Terraform Labs
-
Do Kwon: “The consistent stance of the Korean government — from the Financial Services Commission directly — is that cryptocurrencies are not securities. We are a bit disappointed that prosecutors are attempting to create new regulation through criminal enforcement proceedings.”
-
Timestamp: 4:52
Topic: South Korean arrest warrant
-
Do Kwon: “We haven’t seen a copy of the arrest warrant, so every piece of data that we’re consuming regarding this is from the media, which as you can imagine in a situation like this, is kind of hectic. There’s a lot of contradictory information.”
-
Timestamp: 7:02
Topic: Do’s location
-
Do Kwon: “The main reason why I don’t want to talk about my location is that when the crash happened in May, there were lots of situations where personal security was threatened. People broke into my apartment building in multiple cases. The media televised my home in South Korea as well as my home in Singapore. Every time the location where I live becomes known, it becomes almost impossible for me to live there.”
-
Timestamp: 9:59
Topic: Misinformation from South Korea
-
Do Kwon: “I don’t know if their intentions were to mislead, I don’t know if it was a simple mistake, but there are simply too many things that are not true that are coming out of [Korea].”
-
Timestamp: 12:07
Read Also: Do Kwon Speaks On Plans to Airdrop Additional Funds to Victims of TerraUSD (UST) Collapse
Topic: Funds frozen by the South Korean Government
-
Do Kwon: [Flat denial of any funds being frozen or previously using KuCoin or OKX]… We’re just uncomfortable with the amount of misinformation that is coming out of Korea and we think it has been consistent throughout the last few months.
-
Timestamp: 12:59
Topic: LFG accounting
-
Do Kwon: “We’ve hired an on-chain analysis company and worked with them to provide all trading data at LFG, so they should be publishing a report shortly, which I think is going to provide a lot more clarity. There isn’t any embezzlement or theft of funds or anything to that effect that seems to be cycling through the media.”
-
Timestamp: 17:11
Topic: Do apologizes and takes responsibility
-
Do Kwon: “I am sorry… I believed in the stability of UST, and I do understand that my beliefs and statements about how stable and safe UST would be led a lot of traders and holders, without the tools to understand the complex economic mechanisms underpinning UST, to gain confidence in a system that ultimately failed. And, I do apologize and I do own up to the full responsibility of that.”
-
Timestamp: 22:30
Topic: Terra not being a fraud and Do’s integrity
-
Do Kwon: “In the process of people dealing with this grief, there have been a lot of people making allegations like “it was a fraud,” or “Do Kwon probably shorted UST,” or “there was theft or embezzlement going on”… I’ve been a founder in crypto for the last five years. I… hold the transparency, openness, and integrity of this industry quite highly, and even to this day, I am proud of the integrity by which…we tried to create our protocols, the work that we did, and the values that we tried to defend.”
-
Timestamp: 23:23
Topic: When asked about the role of the Luna Foundation Guard during the de-peg events
-
Do Kwon: “One of the things that people misunderstand about LFG is they think it played the role of an active market maker. That’s not how it was designed at all. The initial goal was for LFG to raise large amounts of BTC by selling Luna and this BTC would be bridged over to the Terra blockchain and be a secondary way of minting and redeeming UST, not just Luna.”
-
Timestamp: 43:13
Topic: LFG distribution
-
Do Kwon: “Right now, the Luna Foundation Guard is not in a state where it can make clear disposal of its assets. There is pending civil litigation against LFG, so until those are resolved, we just are not able to distribute tokens at our discretion. I don’t have a lot of clarity on how long the process will take, but it’s hopefully soon.”
-
Timestamp: 1:17:55
Topic: Do’s view on the future of money and digital currencies
-
Do Kwon: “I do really think that building decentralized money is one of the most important problems that crypto has to solve, right, because without it, what are we even doing here?… I do think it’s important for new developers to learn from what happened here and to keep attempting to create decentralized money that is not just censorship-resistant, but more robust, more transparent, and resistant to failure.”
-
Timestamp: 1:24:35
Topic: Do’s future, continuing to build
-
Do Kwon: “I plan to be working on things that are exciting to me. Once again, I am 31, and I still want to contribute… I plan to continue building and look forward to working with several of you in the future.”
-
Timestamp: 1:26:23
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, and Google News
