According to Findings, Terra Labs Possessed Stablecoins Worth $3.6b that May Have Been Used to Manipulate Prices
- According to a June 28 article by CoinDesk Korea, the investigation revealed that Terra Labs had about $3.6 billion in USDT and UST that may have been utilized for price manipulation.
- CEO Do Kwon has disclosed utilization information for UST, Terra (LUNA), and Bitcoin (BTC) through his SNS or Terra Foundation.
- The report covers all the on-chain data the researchers utilized to follow the movement of around $3.6 billion in cash from an unidentified source.
Tether (USDT) is a cryptocurrency with a value backed by the US dollar. UST is a stablecoin project developed by Do Kwon’s company, Terraform Labs. UST was designed to be pegged to the US dollar and used as a payment system on the Terra blockchain.
The project was widely publicized and attracted many investors. However, shortly after it launched, the value of UST began to decline rapidly, eventually collapsing entirely. This led to accusations that Do Kwon and his company had deliberately manipulated the price of UST in order to profit from its collapse.
Now, new allegations have surfaced that suggest Do Kwon and his company may have been involved in more than just manipulating the price of UST. It is claimed that they had enough assets in Tether and TerraUSD worth $3.6 billion for illicit activities such as money laundering or funding illegal operations.
If these allegations are true, it would mean that Do Kwon and his company are not only responsible for the collapse of UST but also for any illegal activities that were funded with Tether or UST. This would be a major scandal and could lead to serious legal repercussions for those involved.
The study found that Terra had moved large amounts of USDT and UST from exchanges to wallets under their control in the days before the incident. This, combined with the fact that they were selling these tokens on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) for Korean won (KRW) at below-market rates, suggests that they were trying to manipulate the price of USDT.
It is also worth noting that Terra tried to hide their involvement after the incident by moving all of their remaining USDT and UST to a new wallet address. However, Uppsala was able to identify this address as belonging to Terra due to its similarity to other addresses used by the company.
Overall, this finding provides strong evidence that Terra was indeed behind the collapse of the USDT stablecoin.
Barry Pene is a stern blockchain research/copywriter. Barry has been trading cryptos since 2017 and has been invested in issues that would put the blockchain industry on the right pedestal. Barry's research expertise cuts across blockchain as a disruptive technology, DeFis, NFTs, Web3, and reduction of energy consumption levels of cryptocurrency mining.
