Terraform Labs May Be Holding Over $159,000,000 in Crypto Despite Claims of Almost Losing Everything: Arkham Intelligence

Terraform Labs could be holding more than $159 million worth of crypto despite previous claims to the contrary, according to new on-chain sleuthing performed for Arkham Intelligence.

The sleuthing, executed by the pseudonymous on-chain analyst ErgoBTC and another anonymous on-chain researcher, was incentivized by a bounty of 9519.263 Arkham’s newly launched native token (ARKM).

The bounty is worth nearly $5,000 at time of writing.

Arkham is an intelligence exchange where buyers can place bounties on specific pieces of information.

ErgoBTC and the anonymous sleuth find that Terraform Labs and/or its disgraced co-founder Do Kwon hold 5,292 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $153.10 million, as well as roughly $4.61 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) along with other crypto assets.

Those alleged holdings run counter to the narrative put forward by the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) last year.

The LFG, a non-profit organization built to support the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem, said on Twitter that it had largely drained its crypto holdings in May 2022 to combat the collapse of the ecosystem’s stablecoin, TerraUSD (UST). It claimed to hold only 313 Bitcoin, as well as 39,914 Binance Coin (BNB) and 1,973,554 Avalanche (AVAX).

This February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that Kwon transferred 10,000 Bitcoin from Terraform Labs and the LFG into a Swiss bank account as LUNA and UST were imploding.

Swiss authorities reportedly froze $26 million worth of those assets last month, according to the Korean outlet Digital Asset. The Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum froze the crypto after Swiss authorities received requests from the New York Attorney’s Office and the SEC.

Kwon was sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro in June for using a forged Costa Rican passport, though those relatively minor charges are likely just the beginning of the outspoken Terra founder’s problems.

Authorities in the United States and South Korea both want to extradite the disgraced crypto executive, who’s facing multiple charges arising from the $40 billion crash of the Terra ecosystem.

Dan Sunghan, the director of the financial crime investigation bureau at the Seoul Southern District Prosecution Service, recently told Bloomberg that Kwon could serve more than four decades behind bars.

Kwon claimed on Twitter in February that he’d “stolen no money and never had ‘secret cashouts.’” He also said he was “happy to address any specific allegations” – though it remains unclear if he’s ever addressed the allegations in any public forum.

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