South Korean authorities have asked Interpol for a red notice to prevent the crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon from fleeing extradition, days after the Terra founder denied being “on the run” in a message posted to his Twitter account. The international cat-and-mouse chase comes amid another collapse in the value of the sector, apparently prompted by the “merge”, an unprecedented alteration in the technical infrastructure that underpins Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency. Kwon was the founder of the Terra/Luna cryptocurrency platform, an attempt to build a system that could rival Ethereum in scale. But Kwon’s attempts to build an “algorithmic stablecoin” that would retain its value at exactly $1 without any reserves underpinning it failed catastrophically in spring 2022, wiping out more than $80bn (£70bn) of value as the tokens were sold by panicky holders, and triggering a wider crypto crash that destroyed two-thirds of the value of the entire sector. A charismatic frontman, Kwon was wildly known for engaging in verbal sparring on social media with people who questioned the sustainability of his creation, even in its dying days.
Full story : South Korea asks Interpol to prevent Terra founder from fleeing extradition.