‘I alone am responsible,’ says CEO Do Kwon in first interview since collapse

The CEO of Terra has come out to take responsibility for the project’s crash earlier this year.

Do Kwon, the founder of Terra, has given his first interview since the project crashed in May 2022, leading to the loss of billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency market.

He assumed responsibility for the crash, adding that he didn’t think of what could happen to him if the Terra project failed.

In May, Terra’s UST and LUNA cryptocurrencies lost nearly $45 billion (€44 billion) in value within a few days. The project’s crash affected the broader cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin’s price also declining during that period. 

In an interview on the NFTV series Coinage with host Zack Guzman, Kwon said;

“I’ve never thought about what could happen to me if this fails. You’ve got to put yourself in the shoes of a founder, and the ecosystem is inching close to $100 billion. If you’ve had a series of wins and you get to that scale, then like you almost don’t think that you could fail.”

Kwon revealed that he hadn’t been contacted by South Korean investigators following Luna’s crash. However, if the authorities contact him, Kwon said he would explain everything that happened with the project. He said;

“What we’re going to do is we’re just going to put out the the facts as we know them. We’re going to be totally honest and deal with whatever consequences as they may be.”

When asked if there was a mole within Terraform Labs that could have profited from short selling, Kwon said;

“But if those opportunities existed, then the blame is on the person that presented those vulnerabilities in the first place… I, and I alone, am responsible for any weaknesses that could have been presented for a short seller to start to take profit.”

The Terraforms founder resisted comparisons between his company and the notorious blood testing start-up run by Elizabeth Holmes. According to Kwon, Theranos never worked. He said;

“For Terra stablecoins, it was working beautifully throughout the entire history that it was, and the fact that it was working perfectly was visible in the order books and was present in all the integrations in the open source and transparent matter [of] crypto until it stopped working.”

The Terra project has since rebranded and is listed on some cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance. However, it is yet to bounce back to its previous popular levels.