Police identify visitor to Terra founder's home as crypto streamer

The uninvited visitor to Terraform Labs co-founder and CEO Do Kwon's Seoul residence has been identified by police. 

An AfreecaTV streamer who goes by Chancers has admitted to the visit last Thursday afternoon and claims he has lost around 3 billion won ($2.3 million) from his investment in Luna vis-a-vis TerraUSD (UST.)

The value of Luna, the cryptocurrency linked to stablecoin UST, has been nearly worthless since last Friday. About a week prior, its market capitalization stood at around $37.8 billion. 

Over the weekend, South Korean media reported that law enforcement officials are trying to identify the person who came to Kwon’s house on Thursday and asked his wife about his whereabouts. The wife has reportedly been in protective police custody at her own request since then.

At half past noon on Monday, the streamer was met with a throng of reporters while leaving a police investigation at the Seoul Seongdong Police Station.

The local police were questioning the streamer about his uninvited visit to Kwon’s residence and ringing the doorbell.

“I am sorry for causing trouble,” he said. “I am hoping for a good resolution for the more than 200,000 people that have been hard hit by the Luna coin debacle.”

When asked about how he attained the address, the crypto influencer said he came across a certified copy of Kwon’s register in online communities.

While fielding questions from the press, Chancers doubled down on his demands for an apology from the Terra founder.

Chancers asked Kwon to publicly apologize for the digital asset’s sharp decline in value as he is witnessing “people who have given up on life” because of it. The 31-year-old CEO mainly communicates via Twitter and is infamous for avoiding the press. 

There are indeed warning signs of the effects of Luna's crash on crypto investors. 

Investors in South Korea have taken to online forums to write about "going to Han River," a euphemism for suicide by drowning. 

The number of keyword searches for “Mapo Bridge" -- which straddles the Han River -- on the country's main portal Naver surged to 760 on Thursday from the previous average of 300 per day. The Mapo police station announced it has strengthened its patrol around the area as a preventative measure. 

While streaming, he has previously mentioned his investments in Luna and admitted to going to the disgraced entrepreneur’s house. 

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced Friday it will remove Luna and UST from its platform – following what is widely considered to be one of the industry's biggest meltdowns.

Binance indefinitely suspended the trading of the two across most of its spot pairs Thursday evening; and froze Luna trading across all cross margins and isolated margin pairs.

Also on Friday, South Korea’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit announced its decision to stop the trade of Luna.

UST is a stablecoin created on the Terra ecosystem and its value is pegged to the greenback. Luna, on the other hand, is the native token of the Terra ecosystem and the reserve currency for UST.

UST differs from other stablecoins like Tether and USD Coin in that it is not backed by any real-world assets such as bonds. In this sense, the success of the Terra ecosystem was dependent on investors’ trust that the influx of Luna in circulation would not decrease its value. 

The company used decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Anchor to support the price of Luna. 

The price of UST and Luna stood at $0.14 and $0.0002 respectively on Friday – both are supposed to be pegged to $1. 

The 31-year-old Terraform Labs CEO Kwon founded the company with Ticket Monster founder Shin Hyun-sung in 2018.

The graduate of Stanford University's school of computer engineering previously worked as an engineer at Microsoft and Apple.

Write to Jee Abbey Lee, Song-ryeol Lee at jal@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.