South Korean crypto tycoon Do Kwon is giving Sam Bankman-Fried a break from headlines this week as the Wall Street Journal profiles his elusive international escape after his company Terraform Labs went belly up last year. For a little backstory, two of Terraform Labs' tokens, TerraUSD and Luna, crashed in May 2022, collapsing the cryptocurrency market with its loss of $40 billion. As the stablecoin TerraUSD (set at a steady rate of $1 via algorithm) devalued, an estimated 100,000 South Koreans along with investors across the globe lost their savings. Kwon told the Journal that June, "I've been devastated by recent events and hope that all the families who've been impacted are taking care of themselves and those that they love."
But as investigations into what exactly was going on at Terraform Labs heated up, Kwon gave authorities the slip that September in Singapore, where he lived with his wife and newborn child. First he flew to Dubai, then Serbia, where he stayed for months until finally getting arrested as he tried to board a flight with a Costa Rican passport in Montenegro. During life on the lam, Kwon was active on social media, appeared on podcasts and in interviews (during one, Martin Shkreli told him life in jail wasn't "that bad"), and even registered a new company. All the while, he attempted to salvage his blockchain in a project deemed Terra Rebirth League, dished out over Telegram with 300 colleagues. Kwon tweeted he was "'not on the run' or anything similar" that September, the New York Times reports, despite news of his arrest warrant going public.
While "not on the run," Kwon also rubbed elbows with politicians while staying in his posh Belgrade apartment, including Milojko Spajic, who would later become Montenegro's prime minister. Despite having a red notice from Interpol and in February, a lawsuit slapped on him by the US SEC, he evaded capture until March 2023. From jail, he claimed in a letter to a political rival that Spajic tried to raise funds for his campaign via Kwon and his colleagues, tainting his anti-corruption reputation (though Spajic still won the prime minister seat). Today, both South Korea and the US are jockeying to extradite Kwon. Per the Journal, if Kwon is sent stateside, he will likely await trial in the same jail as Bankman-Fried, whose company was weakened after Kwon's crypto crash. (More cryptocurrency stories).
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