South Korea asks Interpol to prevent Terra founder from fleeing extradition

theguardian.com:

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. After reports this month that South Korean prosecutors were seeking his arrest, Kwon, who was apparently based in Singapore at the time, tweeted: “I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide.”

Now South Korean prosecutors say they are unable to contact Kwon, who hasn’t tweeted since Friday. “We have begun the procedure to place him on the Interpol red notice list and revoke his passport,” the prosecutors’ office told the Financial Times on Monday, since he is “obviously