‘Devastated’: Terraform Labs co-founder and billionaire Do Kwon loses fortune in crash

Earlier this year, Do Kwon was a billionaire. But now, after a “devastating” crypto crash, he’s lost almost everything.

Earlier this year, Do Kwon was a billionaire – but after a brutal recent crypto crash, his vast fortune has almost completely vanished.

The 30-year-old South Korean co-founder of Terraform Labs watched as his crypto empire crumbled last month in a shocking $40 billion crash.

Now, in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, he revealed he lost almost all of his personal net worth in the wipe-out.

He told the publication late last week that estimates of his former billionaire status were likely correct, although he claimed he “never really counted” his total wealth.

However, he also confirmed he lost nearly everything last month, although he insisted that “this doesn’t bother me” because “I live a fairly frugal life”.

But while Mr Kwon is unconcerned by his own financial losses, he conceded it had been a horrific blow generally.

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Do Kwon, co-founder and chief executive officer of Terraform Labs, was a billionaire before losing it all. Picture: Woohae Cho/Bloomberg

“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,” he said.

But despite that staggering setback, Mr Kwon told the WSJ he had “great confidence in our ability to build back even stronger than we once were”.

He’s planning to do so with a new form of Terra, which was the blockchain network that supported the TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies.

It was a so-called “stablecoin”, which meant it was supposed to hold its value at $1, although that spectacularly failed in the collapse and is now worth less than one cent, wiping out the fortunes of countless investors along with it.

But while Mr Kwon is convinced of a comeback, others aren’t so certain, as cryptocurrencies continue their volatile run.

Crypto ‘must be eradicated’

One such critic is business writer Michael Hiltzik, who argued that cryptocurrencies “must be eradicated” in a recent opinion piece for Al Jazeera.

“What we call the ‘crypto party’ should never have started. Because in this party, there’s nothing being sold or promoted that is fundamentally worth anything,” he wrote.

“Small, not so knowledgeable, investors have been lured in. And they are the ones being taken to the woodshed in this meltdown. They bought at very high prices, and they are now dealing with very low prices. Some of them have lost their life savings.

Crypto critics are piling on. Picture: Ozan Kose/AFP

“I am angry at our regulators for letting this happen. I am angry at promoters for knowingly sucking people in. But I’m also angry at people who have been sucked in, because they should have been more careful with their assets.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by none other than billionaire Bill Gates, who recently said he believed crypto and NFTs were little more than a scam.

He told a TechCrunch conference earlier this month that digital assets were “100 per cent based on greater fool theory” and that he’s “not long or short” on crypto as a result.

It comes amid growing concerns of a “crypto winter”, with Chinese state-run newspaper Economic Daily warning recently that the price of bitcoin was “heading to zero” after weeks of uncertainty.