After 18 months on the lam, Do Kwon — the insufferably smug crypto bro who has been accused of wiping out the life savings of countless investors — has finally been hauled to the United States to face the music. His extradition marks the end of a humiliating fall from self-proclaimed crypto royalty to perpwalked loser.
As reported by the BBC, Kwon's house of cards came crashing down in May 2022 when his two cryptocurrencies, TerraUSD and Luna, imploded spectacularly, vaporizing $40 billion in just 48 hours. U.S. prosecutors accuse him of "orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud"—a far cry from the days when he called his suckers "Lunatics" and basked in their worship as their "king."
Just days before his empire imploded, Kwon dismissed a British economist's prescient warning about his unstable business model by tweeting: "I don't debate the poor on Twitter, and sorry I don't have any change on me for her at the moment."
The wannabe crypto mogul's time on the run reads like a coward's playbook. After fleeing South Korea with authorities in hot pursuit, Kwon's luck ran out in Montenegro, where police caught him trying to slip away to Dubai with forged documents. Even then, he fought extradition until finally conceding defeat. His company, Terraform Labs, limped into bankruptcy this January—a fitting epilogue to his reign of financial destruction.
"Despite a huge amount of money being poured into the coins, on 9 May 2022 Terraform Labs collapsed catastrophically, losing more than 99% of its value in 48 hours," the BBC reported. Those who once praised his "genius" watched in horror as their investments evaporated, while Kwon played a global game of cat-and-mouse with authorities.
Fun fact: Kwon named his daughter Luna, announcing the birth in April 2022 by tweeting, "My dearest creation named after my greatest invention." [Wikipedia]
Previously:
• Explainer: Hawk Tuah Girl's crypto token crashes, wiping out $500 million in 24 hours
• Man loses $230M crypto fortune after falling for scammers' plot
• Watch this loud contraption shake coins to create unhackable crypto wallets
• Crypto influencer convicted in $110m scam