The Collapse of Cryptocurrency City — The Legendary Life of a Korean Prodigy
In the rainy alley of Seoul, Kwon Do-hyung clutched his Stanford University diploma, the rain dampening the ambition in his eyes. In 2018, Silicon Valley was at the dawn of the cryptocurrency wave. This Korean youth, who had once coded at Microsoft and polished products at Apple, ignited the spark of Terraform Labs with a white paper. When LUNA coin burst onto the scene, he stood in the spotlight of the launch event, dressed in a suit, with sharp words, promising to create a "stablecoin system that would never collapse."
The algorithmic peg mechanism between UST and LUNA was once a myth cherished by capital. In 2021, with the cryptocurrency market in a frenzy, this "dual-coin combination" saw its market value soar to $40 billion, and Kwon Do-hyung became a top figure in the crypto circle, traveling in private jets and attending high-end summits, revered by followers as the "wealth creation guru." He boldly declared war on traditional finance on Twitter, claiming to upend the global payment system, yet no one noticed the fatal flaws hidden in the algorithmic model — when market confidence collapsed, the so-called "automated arbitrage" was nothing but a mirage.
The black week of May 2022 became the last straw that broke the myth. The unpegging of UST triggered panic selling, with the price of LUNA plummeting from $119 to $0.0001, evaporating $45 billion in market value in an instant. Countless investors returned to poverty overnight; some jumped to their deaths, others protested in the streets, while Kwon Do-hyung had already fled with the funds. He changed to a fake passport, traversed multiple countries, and attempted to hide his whereabouts in Montenegro, but ultimately could not escape the pursuit of Interpol.
The light inside the iron bars was cold. On December 11, 2025, the ruling of the New York court shattered his last fantasy. 15 years of imprisonment and a $109 million fine reduced the once "crypto nouveau riche" to a prisoner. Through thick glass, he gazed at the free sky outside, recalling those investors he had betrayed, remembering his once fervent "financial revolution," which ultimately was just a carefully packaged scam. The additional prosecution in South Korea is still pending, and this legend that began with ambition ultimately ended in destruction, leaving behind a bloody warning in the history of cryptocurrency.
