Former crypto darling and now fugitive Do Kwon has been arrested in Montenegro; Kwon was the architect and face of the TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna cryptocurrency. Late last year, South Korea issued an arrest warrant for Kwon (opens in new tab), but Kwon quickly went into hiding. This is one good use of Twitter.

Mr. Kwon's arrest was announced (opens in new tab) (machine translation) by Montenegro's Interior Minister Filip Azic.

"The former 'cryptocurrency king' who lost more than $40 billion was detained at Podgorica airport with forged documents, and South Korea, the US, and Singapore are demanding (his extradition)."

Kwon was attempting to travel to Dubai using a forged Costa Rican passport and was also in possession of a forged Belgian passport. According to Ajic, authorities were waiting for Kwon's identity to be officially confirmed, and Korean police later confirmed that the arrested man's fingerprints matched their records. Kwon is wanted in Singapore as well as South Korea, and in February, U.S. prosecutors announced that they would charge him with fraud: specifically, securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, and conspiracy.

Do Kwon is believed to be in Serbia, which borders Montenegro, and the South Koreans even sent officials to Belgrade to lay the groundwork for his extradition (since there is currently no extradition treaty between the two countries). Montenegro has no extradition treaty with either South Korea or the U.S., which means it will be a little longer before Mr. Kwon is handcuffed on a plane: where he will be tried is the bigger question.

Oh well. Fake passports and secret identities must have seemed like a good idea at the time if, in the words of U.S. prosecutors, they were "orchestrating a multibillion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud." Kwon has remained silent on social media since February 1, and his lawyer has yet to comment on his arrest.

The collapse of TerraUSD and Luna triggered a massive wave of crypto selling, with the value of both plummeting to near zero in May 2022. It became big enough to affect billboards in the crypto sector, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, and since then we have seen one crypto disaster after another (most recently the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (open in new tab)). Unfortunately for Do Kwon, the time will soon come when he will have to pay the price.