Video emerges of Do Kwon’s ‘UST’ chant prior to Terra collapse
As Terra founder Do Kwon deals with the fallout from the collapse of his stablecoin UST, a video recorded several months ago has come back to haunt him.
The video – posted online in recent days – shows the Stanford graduate chanting ‘UST’ during a speaking engagement, before admitting it made him “feel like the Bitconnect guys.”
You can watch the video here:
Do Kwon has come under immense scrutiny since the UST stablecoin lost its peg with the US dollar, causing Terra’s LUNA token to fall from an all time high of more than US$100 to $0.0001.
“I am heartbroken about the pain my invention has brought on all of you,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I’ve spent the last few days on the phone calling Terra community members – builders, community members, employees, friends and family, that have been devastated by UST depegging.”
Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and one of the world’s most prominent blockchain figures has weighed in on the collapse.
“I think (UST) was transparently going to falter at some point,” he said.
“Do Kwon obviously stood by it, morally and in terms of press, long after he should have backed off.
“He claimed, accurately, that it was backed by a bunch of volatile assets. It was very publicly clear that those assets might go down, and the rest followed.
“Luna was a case of mass enthusiasm, excitement, and – frankly – marketing and memes – driving people to believe in something which was going to falter according to publicly available information.
“That marketing was probably bad.”