S Korean crypto-boss Do Kwon to be extradited to US | Hacker News Reader

S Korean crypto-boss Do Kwon to be extradited to US

bbc.com

84 pointsceejayoz48 comments

It would be nice if everyone that held him up (YouTubers and influencers) also saw similar legal actions

This would be reasonable if Terra was a clear scam. But it wasn’t.

Terra was a successful blockchain.

Investors lost money and they had to blame the leader.

"Successful" seems a rather generous description. If an apartment building is built on quicksand and collapses overnight, are the people who bought apartments the ones to blame?

At some point if you’re buying your apartment in a vast field of quicksand surrounded by hundreds of other sinking and sunk buildings… yes?

Let's not pretend that people who put money into such crypto "investments" don't know exactly what is going on. The goal is always to pull money out before the inevitable collapse and leave some other sucker holding the bag. And if you get too greedy and don't manage to do it in time just cry fraud and turn to the government for help. After hundreds of such high profile incidents this is still regularly happening today (see the "Hawk Tuah coin" for example). I have no sympathy for anyone involved in these scams, whether perpetrator or victim.

There were plenty of unwitting, first-time crypto investors in the case of HAWK. The reason that influencers like Ms. Welsh are of such great value to crypto scammers is that they introduce or legitimize crypto investment to new unexperienced and unwitting investors.

These folks are scammers, the people who fall for the scams are victims.

If you are buying in a region entirely located on quicksand, with the intent of selling it off for more before it sinks - yes.

What happens if the developer has built a fake level that hides the quicksand so that you don’t find out about until later?

I think "successful blockchain" means like "successful crime".

"successful blockchain"

Ponzi schemes are often successful until they aren't.

The parent also claimed a false premise: Do Kwon wasn't running a "clear" scam.

PAYING* 4.5 billion in SEC fines for FRAUD and running around with forged passports check that box for me.

*edit: AFAIK, the firm is going through bankruptcy and hasn't necessarily paid anything yet.

The NY stock exchange will be successful right up until it isn’t, the only difference is that it’s backed by a very powerful military.

>the only difference is that it’s backed by a very powerful military.

No, actually there are lots of material differences between the NYSE and Yet Another Shitcoin.

I specifically remember that time and anyone that believed 20% APY could go on forever was either stupid or fooling themselves. And when you said this you were attacked so I’ve never had a bit of sympathy for them.

how is what do did different from what marketers did?

I think building something interesting, but not marketing it to investors, should be legal/ok, but the moment you start telling the story of this product being a safe 20% return investment is when you need to get in trouble.

It had a death loop which got triggered by market pressure on a stablecoin leading to a run on the native token which actually made it converge to zero: can't get much more unsuccessful than that.

i actually disagree with this philosophy. If you are a small business and you co market or collaborate with another and have no idea about their ethics should you see legal action for them being illicit in any way? How would a youtuber be able to audit and actually get enough information to determine a massive company wasn't above board.

if you're going to tell people to buy stuff, make sure its legit stuff before advertising it.

Youtubers aren't indie anymore, they're businesses.

They are YouTubers not auditors, even auditors have a hard time figuring out if companies are legit or not (Wirecard). Why would a YouTuber or influencer be able to do that task as a side thing when getting advertising deals?

Maybe they should take advertising deals from reputable companies? And skip the scam coins? And here’s a hint, they are all scam coins. Promoting a crypto project is just a bad idea.

FTX was considered to be a very reputable company, Bernie Maddoff was a reputable money manager, Enron had quite the reputation, Boeing, VW, Theranos, SVB, etc...

Easy to say that you should only do business with reputable entities until you try and figure out who that is.

There’s no way the hawk tuah girl was running an illegitimate coin scam. The premise was so solid!

In this specific case it was obvious that Luna was based on dubious economics. It didn’t require auditor skills. Barely high school economics. If YouTubers are not blamed for promoting scams without appropriate disclaimers, the crypto industry will grow the wrong way. Making the promoters responsible for this would help legitimate projects.

I understand your point, but I still don't think "I couldn't tell whether this was bullshit or not but I got paid a lot to say it" should be a viable defence. Everything with a healthy dose of nuance in the real world though of course.

Please don’t hold me liable for spreading misinformation that I have no ability to verify but just trust me mkay!!!

Those poor little YouTubers get no sympathy from me.

Imagine if the YouTuber was advertising a blandly illegal product, should the be immune too?

I hate it when one person in organization gets in trouble, and everyone else gets away Scott free

I wonder what the legal line is that makes speech or affiliation into aiding and abetting?

Bar is low, but somewhat vague. One example is anti-touting law [0] where you can't pimp a security and not disclose incentives.

[0] https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/alerts/crypto-anti-touti....

Third episode in the trilogy "The Lord of the Rugs".

Episode III: The Return of the Kwon

...and there was much rejoicing in South Korea.

(Actually kidding. South Korea is going through too much shit right now to care about Do Kwon. But if times were simpler, there definitely would have been much rejoicing. We don't trust our own court much, when it comes to white-collar crimes.)

I hope he enjoys his long, long stay in America's prison system.

Why would they be happy about this? I imagine South Koreans would jail him themselves if they wanted.

Unfortunately, South Korean legal system is very lenient on financial crimes, and everybody suspects Kwon will get a slap on the wrist if he's sent to Korea.

The fact that Kwon himself was fighting to be extradited to Korea should tell you something.

Do Kwon was accused of misleading investors.

Has anyone been able to work out how he misled people yet?

Presumably, we'll find out now that he's being extradited to stand trial here in the US.

The complaint is here: https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/distributions-har...

His stablecoin claims failed. He lied about other firms (Chai) using his tech.

NY is hunting him for wire fraud and a few other criminal charges.

His problem is that he’s one person instead of being an institution that mislead people about mortgages

Yes, even a cursory review of the evidence is pretty clear.

Where is Kyle Davies of 3AC and why isn't he extradited yet?

Why is it that the founders of these global companies seem to be extradited to the US so often, but almost never to other countries?

Let' say you make a huge pirate site (like Kim Dotcom's Megaupload), serving copyright-infringing content from many different countries around the world. Why is the US more entitled to having you in their prisons than, let's say, Czechia, Ecuador or Malaysia?

Is it just imperialism, or is there a more sensible explanation for it?

When it comes to international crime, nations may only have a fraction the resources for their justice systems and will explicitly defer to the US because not only will the US often prosecute more aggressively, the Department of Justice has the money to outlast wealthy defendants' delay tactics.

For example, UK's Ministry of Justice has 1/6th the financial resources of the US's Department of Justice.

One notable example of this is with child pornography prosecutions. Many countries do not have a dedicated child pornography specialist units capable of digital forensics and analysis where the US does. So various international ministries and departments of justice will team up with the US, feeding info back to Virginia and even permanently stationing personnel there to act as liaisons, during very complex child pornography investigations.

Additionally, many countries will threaten extradition to the US to gain plea deals.

Finally, you may have missed the final paragraph:

>The former finance officer of Terraform Labs, Hon Chang-joon, was extradited to South Korea in February, after serving four months in prison in Montenegro over fraud charges.

South Korean imperialism?

Most extradition agreements are bidirectional, so it’s really a question of why Czechia, Ecuador or Malaysia aren’t asking courts to extradite someone as much.

My understanding is that these agreements basically require the other country to put the case to court (as long as the act was illegal in both places).

But a solid question of how to handle multiple requestors but there’s only one body to go around.

I have no statistics, just one case: my schoolmate and Amiga hacker has been extradited from US to Czechia.

Maybe because the other countries haven't created the same regulation regime for the things they have been picked up on? The US just puts together the cases and the other countries comply?

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