This week on Crypto Twitter: Do Kwon Takes Heat for UST Failure

It was the market sixth weekly decline in a rowbut on Crypto Twitter, the industry’s eyes were fixed on UST’s historic depegging.

Terra’s dollar-denominated algorithmic stablecoin collapsed, reaching a low of $ 0.13 on Friday, causing a domino effect in which the price of LUNA fell to virtually zero then people rushed to leave UST by redeeming it for LUNA, which is currently worth a fraction of a cent as UST trades at $ 0.17.

There are many questions, complaints, suggestions and conspiracy theories about exactly what happened, but first let’s rewind and remind you of Terra CEO Do Kwon’s huge hubris.

Last week, he literally said this would never happen.

In March, he personally threatened to crush his rivals in the algorithmic stablecoin market.

But this week, Kwon’s pride plummeted, as did his projects. Guess the earth got a little unstable?

UST began to seriously decline on Monday as it reached a low of 79 cents during the day. Do Kwon assured the followers that he did everything he could to throw money at the situation.

He also tweeted vague mumblings about a “recovery plan”.

By Wednesday, you would be forgiven for believing that Kwon had everything under control.

An hour later, he admitted defeat in a long thread.

By Friday, he personally hit the last nail in UST’s coffin.

“Predictable, if you knew the details”

Nic Carter, a blockchain journalist and general partner of the crypto-centric investment firm Castle Island Ventures, pointed out the irony of Terra’s collapse. Do Kwon may believe that “decentralized economies deserve decentralized money”, but would a really decentralized currency let its creator take action like this?

By Tuesday, Bloomberg crypto-journalist Muyao Shen had decided that she could not absorb any more Terra conspiracy theories.

FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried emphasized that UST’s depeg was not a big enough surprise to deserve any wild conclusions.

TRON boss Justin Sun, as well recently issued an algorithmic stablecoin like Terra, he decided to show his support for Do Kwon, his main inspiration.

It is worth noting that the similarities between Sun and Kwon go beyond having common stablecoin ideas, or the fact that at some point both CEOs wanted to invest in $ 10 billion Bitcoin reserves for their stablecoins. Even when it was worth a dollar, it was practically the only purpose of keeping Terra’s UST to unlock it in the DeFi protocol Anchor, which promised the stakes a 20% return. This week, Tron promised return of up to 30% to invest its own recently issued USDD stablecoin on the JustLend lending protocol.

At the height of LUNA’s collapse, Sun began to R & D create his own creation.

But Justin Sun has little reason to fear. While TRX is currently down 23% from last week – a normal fall for a leading project – LUNA is down … more than 99%.

Binance chief Changpeng Zhao said he was “very disappointed” with Terra’s handling of the situation, saying the Terra team was “in stark contrast to Axie Infinity, where the team took responsibility, had a plan and communicated proactively with us.”

It should be noted that CZ’s own “handling” of the situation involved the removal of all LUNA trading pairs before they resumed LUNA trading again. exclusively against BUSD, Binance’s dollar-denominated stablecoin. Binance also originally had a limit that stopped UST trades if the price fell below 70 cents, but on Tuesday the stock exchange had removed this protection. Because profit.

Finally, Cardano creator and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson had a short and handsome exchange with Do Kwon.

‘Soros-style’?

There were allegations that the crash was the result of foul play by attackers with insider knowledge. Crypto enthusiast @napgener accused the Citadel, accusing the US hedge fund giant of borrowing $ 100,000 in Bitcoin, swapping it for UST and then dumping it UST to wipe out the market.

Other variants of this theory implied the asset management giant BlackRock in the action, along with the crypto exchange Gemini. Both BlackRock and Citadel denied the allegations in emails to Forbes. Gemini denied the allegations in a tweet the same day.

At least one blockchain developer said there was never a bad game.

Meanwhile, security researcher Eric Tung remembered the LUNAtic coping theories.

That said, the blockchain specification Onchain Wizard released a remarkably popular theory for itself, which suggested that depegging actually may have been an attack.

It is interesting that he refers to Soros’s bet from 1992 against the Bank of England. Last year, a tweeter named @FreddieRaynolds warned that Terra was receptive to a “Soros-style” attack.. At the time, Do Kwon dismissed the thread as “Probably the most backward thread I’ve read this decade.”

But what most people can agree that two huge Terra projects failed spectacularly. And although we know broadly what led to the death spiralmany questions remain.

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