Do Kwon (born Kwon Do-hyung, 1991) is a South Korean entrepreneur and early-stage investor best known as co-founder of Terraform Labs, the Singapore-registered company behind the Terra blockchain. He studied computer science at Stanford University and worked briefly at Microsoft and Apple before pivoting to crypto. In January 2018, he co-founded Terraform Labs alongside Daniel Shin with the goal of building a programmable money system for decentralized finance. Shin departed the company within two years, leaving Do Kwon as the public face of the project.
Terraform Labs issued two interconnected tokens: LUNA, the native staking and governance token, and UST, an algorithmic stablecoin that maintained its dollar peg through a mint-burn mechanism with LUNA rather than through dollar reserves. By early 2022, UST had grown into one of the largest stablecoins in circulation, and LUNA traded above $100. In May 2022, a large coordinated sell-off broke the UST peg. The death spiral that followed erased an estimated $40–60 billion in market value within 72 hours, wiping out retail investors across more than 100 countries and triggering one of the largest single collapses in financial history. Do Kwon's public responses before and during the crisis – including dismissive tweets toward critics – drew significant regulatory and media attention.
Notable investments
Do Kwon's angel investing activity was concentrated in the Terra ecosystem. Public information about specific deal terms is limited, but the following projects are documented as being backed or incubated with Terraform Labs support during his tenure:
- Chai – a South Korean payments startup that processed Terra stablecoin transactions for e-commerce merchants; one of the earliest real-world use cases for UST
- Anchor Protocol – a Terra-native lending protocol that offered ~20% annual yield on UST deposits; the unsustainably high yield attracted billions in deposits and accelerated the eventual bank run in May 2022
- Mirror Protocol – a synthetic assets platform on Terra allowing users to trade tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs
- LUNA Foundation Guard (LFG) – a Singapore nonprofit funded by Terraform Labs to accumulate Bitcoin and other reserves as a backstop for UST; held roughly $3.5 billion in BTC before the collapse, most of which was depleted in the defense attempt
Public information about additional personal angel deals outside the Terra ecosystem is limited. The five portfolio companies attributed to Do Kwon in databases likely refer to direct Terraform Labs spin-outs and grants rather than separate check-writing activity.
Team
Do Kwon was the sole prominent public founder after Daniel Shin's exit. Shin later founded Chai separately and distanced himself from the collapse. Key technical contributors at Terraform Labs included Nicholas Platias (head of research, overseeing Anchor and Mirror design) and Remi Tetot (growth), though neither holds the public profile Do Kwon maintained.
Legal proceedings and recent activity
In February 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs for alleged fraud and unregistered securities offerings. The U.S. Department of Justice issued parallel criminal charges. On March 23, 2023, Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro while traveling on a forged Costa Rican passport. He remained in Montenegrin detention while U.S. and South Korean authorities contested extradition rights. Montenegro's courts ultimately approved extradition; he was transferred to U.S. custody in late 2024. A civil trial in the SEC case concluded in 2024 with a jury finding him liable for fraud – Reuters coverage here. As of early 2026, criminal proceedings in the U.S. federal court remain ongoing.
Terraform Labs itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States in January 2024 and subsequently announced it was winding down operations. The Terra 2.0 chain – launched in May 2022 immediately after the collapse as a community-led fork – continues to trade at a fraction of the original LUNA peak.
Do Kwon's legacy in crypto investing is inseparable from the Terra collapse. The scale of retail losses and the speed of the implosion reshaped global regulatory attitudes toward algorithmic stablecoins, directly influencing the EU's MiCA framework and U.S. stablecoin legislation proposals. Any future investing activity by Do Kwon is contingent on the outcome of pending criminal proceedings.
