This article describes a few of the high profile cases of crypto collapse in 2022.
1. Terraform Labs
Terraform Labs is a Singapore based fintech company.
Its tokens include UST, a algorithm based stable coin, and LUNA, which is designed to absorb stable coin volatility.
Its Defi products includes:
Anchor, a savings product that paid as high as 20% on UST deposits.
Mirror, allows investors to trade synthetic assets, such as Tesla, Microsoft shares
Chai, a payment app that has 2 million users in South Korea
UST lost its peg to US dollar in May 2022. Overnight, UST and Luna literally became worthless tokens. The whole Terra ecosystem collapsed. Many investors lost millions of savings.
The founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon (South Korea citizen), becomes a wanted person on Interpol red notice.
https://coingeek.com/terra-do-kwon-now-wanted-in-195-countries-after-interpol-issues-red-notice/
His last known location is Singapore.
2. 3AC Capital
Three Arrows Capital (3AC) is a Singapore based crypto hedge fund. At one point managed, it manages 10 billions of assets. It collapsed after Terra UST crashed. It is supposed to hedge its exposure by buying and selling crypto based on risk adjusted returns. It probably collapse due to self inflicted bad investment decision process.
It made one directional investments in Luna Classic (LUNC), staked Ether (stETH), without hedging.
Its co-founder are Zhu Su (Singapore citizen since 2016, born in China), Kyle Davies (Singapore citizen, born in US), previously both worked as trader for Credit Suisse.
Zhu Su is selling his $48 million bungalow in Singapore.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/01/three-arrows-capitals-su-zhu-looks-to-sell-35m-singapore-house/
3. Hodlnaut
It is a crypto investment firm, started since 2019, based in Singapore. The co-founders are Simon Lee and JunTao Zhu
JunTao Zhu (SMU graduate) previously worked for Credit Suisse.
In March 2022, Hodlnaut obtained approval for major payment institute license from MAS. In August 2022, it filed for judiciary management with Singapore high court.
In March 2021, an independent review confirmed it had $106 million assets.
In August 2022 , its assets was down to 69 cents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodlnaut
4. Celsius Network
Its founder Alex Mashinsky (dual Israel - US citizen, born in Ukraine), started Celsius Network (HQ in London), in 2017. Alex is a serial entrepreneur. He was working on VoIP protocol previosuly.
Celsius is a crypto lending and borrowing platform. Investors lend out their crypto and earn returns, up to 18%.
Alex withdrew $10 million from Celsius in May 2022. The withdrawals came as customers were withdrawing assets in large quantities while the company was nearing bankruptcy.
Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.
5. Voyager Digital
It is a crypto asset broker started in 2017, in US. It provides lending and borrowing of crypto.
It was founded by Stephen Ehrlich.
It collapsed in part due to 3AC. It filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.
6. BlockFi
It is a crypto lending platform started in 2017, in US (HQ in NYC). It was founded by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez.
It lends U.S. dollars against bitcoin and other cryptocurrency collateral, as well as accepting deposits of cryptocurrencies which pay interest to the depositor. The high yield savings offers interest as high as 9%.
It also has Bitcoin credit card and Bitcoin trust.
It owned licenses from various state in US. https://blockfi.com/licenses
It almost collapsed and was rescued by FTX in June 2022.
