User:Robb Tran/sandbox

= Do Kwon =

Education and early career (Tommy)
Do Kwon’s early education began at Daewon Foreign Language High School, a three year primary education school from 2007 to 2010. The specialization of the high school requires students to master a foreign language. Following his graduation from Daewon, he attended Stanford University in California to study Computer Science and receive his Bachelor’s degree. In 2015, he worked as a software engineer for Microsoft, for a cumulative total of three months. One year later, he developed and founded his own start up, Anyfi. Anyfi is a wireless mesh network that connects users to a single bandwidth.

Terraform Labs (Noelle + Sami)
Terraform labs Pte. Ltd. was founded in 2018 by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. Kwon held the position of CEO of Terraform Labs. According to Terraform labs’ white paper, Kwon and Shin were proposing a cryptocurrency, called Terra, that has stable mining incentives creating an elastic monetary policy alongside an efficient fiscal policy to counteract potential low adoption and limited use cases. Also in 2018, the company released their own cryptocurrency called Luna.

Terra started selling their stablecoin, TerraUSD, in 2020. In April 2022, the value of Luna reached over $116.

During his time at Terraform Labs, Do Kwon worked on various blockchain projects including Mirror, Prism, Astroport, and Anchor.

The Mirror Protocol allows people to disregard current restrictions on stocks and other assets by making it easier to create and trade synthetic versions of these assets.

Regulatory issues (Robb)
TerraUSD marketing has been under investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its marketing practices. Particularly, SEC attorneys are investigating whether Terraform Labs, the issuer behind TerraUSD (UST), broke securities and investment products rules.

UST, unlike other Stablecoins, are not backed by cash or similar assets, but rather rely on trading algorithms and incentives to be steady. The algorithms exchanged UST tokens for $1 worth of its sister coin, Luna, whose value depends on the market. Following the crash in May 7th, 2022, the SEC questions whether UST and its algorithms work as marketed. Despite Terraform Labs being based in Singapore, UST falls under SEC's regulations as Americans bought the token to fund businesses or seek profit.

The SEC is accusing Do Kwon and Terraform Labs for the following :


 * not registering the offer or sale of securities,
 * selling security-based-swaps outside of a national security exchange,
 * unregistered brokerage or dealing,
 * and engaging in securities transactions by an unregistered investment company.

Do Kwon has not been compliant with the investigation, and the SEC has pursued further litigation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of the SEC for jurisdiction over the company.

Do Kwon has also been under scrutiny from Korean investors and the Korean government. Following the crash of both TerraUSD and Luna, there has been ongoing investigation on Terraform Labs for fraud and tax evasions. Investors have also accused Terraform of being a Ponzi scheme. Most notably, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office issued arrest warrants for Kwon on account of violating the capital market law. The Korean National Tax Service also issued tax payment requests worth around $100 million following its own personal investigations on the ground that management decisions leading to the crash were made during the founders' time as Korean residents.

On October 5th, 2022, the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered Kwon to turn in his passport within a 14 day deadline. As of October 19th, 2022, his passport has been invalidated.

A lawsuit was also filed in Singapore on September 23rd, 2022 on charges of fraudulent misrepresentations of UST's stability.

Personal Life (Robb)
Kwon has a large online presence on Twitter. On June 30th, 2021, he tweeted that he doesn't debate the poor on the platform when addressing an economist.

On April 16th, 2022, he tweeted that his daughter had been named after his "greatest invention", Luna.

On September 17th, he tweeted that he is not evading arrest and is willing to fully cooperate with communicative government agencies.

Kwon also has a LinkedIn account, though he has not been active on the platform for a while.

Kwon is now wanted in Korea, has departed Singapore, and has recently arrived in Dubai, but his current whereabouts are unknown.