South Korea Wants To Freeze Do Kwon’s Bitcoin

Financial crimes unit of South Korea’s Supreme Prosecutors Office has requested cryptocurrency exchanges KuCoin and OKX to freeze 3,313 BTC (Bitcoin) owned by Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon.

On September 14, a South Korean court issued an arrest warrant for Do Kwon and five others linked to Terraform Labs, accusing them of violating the country’s securities law and defrauding investors of $40 billion after the collapse of the Terra/Luna crypto project.

Terra’s collapse triggered a downtrend costing the cryptocurrency market a $500 billion value loss, which also led to the collapse of crypto lenders Celsius Network, Voyager Digital and Three Arrows Capital. All three firms were exposed to Terra/Luna tokens and have since filed for bankruptcy.

South Korean authorities requested the help of Interpol in locating Do Kwon, who has been reported missing since May. Interpol issued a Red Notice on Monday, which is a request for police departments across the world to locate and arrest the Luna founder.

Before its collapse, Luna Foundation Guard, a non-profit based in Singapore that manages the Terra protocol, purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) for its UST stablecoin reserves.

According to blockchain data analytics firm CryptoQuant, on September 15 a wallet belonging to the Luna Foundation Guard was created on Binance crypto exchange. In the days that followed, 3,313 BTC was transferred from the wallet to KuCoin and OKX wallets.

Since the request was made, KuCoin has frozen 1,354 BTC worth $27 million transferred to the platform, while OKX has yet to respond to the request by Korean authorities.