Daniel Shin PortOne: How He became a part of Fraud & Forgery?
Daniel Shin PortOne, a founding member of Terraform Labs, was charged in South Korea with crimes relating to the now-defunct cryptocurrencies Terra and Luna. According to allegations from Bloomberg and the local Yonhap News Agency, Shin was reportedly charged with offenses like fraud, carelessness, and embezzlement.
According to Bloomberg, prosecutors at Seoul Southern District Court also indicted nine additional Terra employees, some of whom held positions in management, systems development, and marketing. The outlet claims that the accused’s assets, worth a total of 246.8 billion won (or around $184.7 million), have been frozen.
Together with co-founder Do Kwon, he established Terraform Labs in 2018. Later that year, the company created its Luna cryptocurrency and ultimately linked the token to it in 2020 to (theoretically) maintain Terra’s anchor to the dollar. Luna was destroyed together with Terra last year, incurring a significant financial loss.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Kwon for securities fraud, and the South Korean authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. Kwon was finally caught in Montenegro after trying to evade the law for several months.
According to the SEC’s complaint, Terraform and Kwon consistently asserted that the value of the tokens would rise since they were being offered as crypto asset bonds to investors looking to make a profit. For instance, they advertised and sold UST as a “yield-bearing” stablecoin that offered to pay as much as 20% interest using the Anchor Protocol.
The SEC’s complaint claims that Terraform and Kwon frequently misled and duped investors by claiming that a well-known Korean mobile payment app used the Terra blockchain to settle transactions that would give LUNA value. Terraform and Kwon are also accused of deceiving investors about the reliability of UST.
Do Kwon, a fugitive from justice accused of a multibillion-dollar fraud, and a second suspect detained in Montenegro last week have been sought by South Korea and the United States, the country’s justice minister Marko Kovac announced on Wednesday.
How exactly does a Ponzi scheme operate?
An investment fraud known as a Ponzi scheme draws investors with claims of great returns and no risk but fails to invest the money as stated. Instead, it pays off earlier investors with money from future investors while maybe keeping a portion of the profits. These schemes typically fail when recruiting investors becomes challenging or when multiple investors attempt to cash out. They depend on a steady flow of new buyers to operate. They are called after Charles Ponzi, who ran a similar scam using postal stamps in the 1920s.
Do Kwon, a citizen of South Korea, is a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and the former CEO of Terraform Labs, a South Korean business that created the stablecoin TerraUSD before it crashed in May 2022 and caused havoc in the cryptocurrency markets.
There, he is charged with a new offense: faking his passport to board a flight to Dubai, based on Montenegrin authorities. He will stand trial, and the outcome could result in him being returned to the US or South Korea.
Daniel Shin PortOne’s lawyer, Kim Ki-dong, said in a statement issued to Bloomberg that Shin had nothing associated with the Terra, Luna failure given that he had left the company two years prior and suffered the consequences. He “voluntarily traveled to South Korea after the incident and has been sincerely collaborating with the investigation for over a decade, to aid in truth-finding.”
World-wide legal action
Do Kwon, the subsequent person to invent Terraform, was detained in Montenegro in March. After being accused of fraud and conspiracy by U.S. officials, he is currently awaiting extradition to his native South Korea to face the same charges.
Both the US and South Korea have asked for Kwon’s extradition, but Joon and he must first respond to claims that they used fake passports while being detained in their own country.
In the interim, Kwon has maintained that the allegations made against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should be withdrawn because Terra’s tokens are not securities.
His claims are supported by the decision of a South Korean court that Terra Classic (LUNC), the renamed version of LUNA, is not a security.
What is a “Crypto Asset”?
A computer-generated representation of value called a “crypto asset” is one that you can electronically transfer, store, or trade. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are included here as well. Using distributed ledger technology to track transactions and cryptography to secure digital data, cryptographic currencies are a subset of digital assets.
What do you know about Daniel Shin PortOne?
Daniel Shin PortOne established and shares leadership of the unique payment orchestration company PortOne, which is based in Asia. The company says that by empowering its partners, it hopes to encourage the expansion of digital commerce across Asia.
Before that, however, Daniel Shin PortOne founded TMON, the leading Korean e-commerce unicorn that had a GMV of $3.5 billion. In 2017, he switched from being the CEO to becoming the Chairman. Under the brand name Ticket Monster (TMON), it was introduced in 2010 by Daniel Shin PortOne and is reportedly one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Korea.
Daniel Shin PortOne has won a lot of praise for his entrepreneurial ventures. He was acknowledged by “Wharton Magazine” as one of the “40 under 40” Wharton graduates. Shin has been selected the CEO of the entire year by “Weekly People”. Shin has been selected by the WEF in Switzerland as the Young Global Leader for 2019.
Daniel Shin PortOne is an additional active angel investor. He has reportedly invested in about 40 companies so far. Shin has made investments in many well-known companies, including Team Blind, Vonvon, Tosslab (Jandi), 82 Labs (Morning Recovery), NBT Partners (Cashslide), Tosslab, Marketit, Korea Credit Data, Pomelo Fashion, and Fave.
Conclusion
When TerraUSD and its sister counterpart Luna fell, they both had a value of roughly $40 billion worth of stablecoins that were supposed to be pegged to the dollar.
Authorities in South Korea say that Daniel Shin PortOne and other Terraform partners realized gains of roughly $346 million by selling their crypto holdings before the crash.
Korean authorities, according to Yonhap, say that Daniel Shin PortOne and others duped shareholders by influencing the value of the coin along with fraudulent marketing despite knowing Terra’s price peg system was impracticable.
