Tag: bitcoin

South Korean Investors Feeling the Losses from Luna’s Collapse

| May 19, 2022

I feel bad for the investors that lost their money, but investing in bitcoin has always had a casino like atmosphere to it. You should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose:

An electronic display at Bithumb customer center in southern Seoul shows the plummeted value of Luna on Tuesday. [YONHAP]
An electronic display at Bithumb customer center in southern Seoul shows the plummeted value of Luna on Tuesday. [YONHAP]

The collapse of Luna is starting to ripple through Korea as investors in the coin and companies associated with it add up their losses and adjust their plans.  

Victims range from retail punters to some of the largest business names in the country, and the damages go from trivial to existential, though the sense is that, so far, the Luna fiasco will not be a Lehman moment and threaten crypto markets or the broader markets in a systemic way.    

“I lost my entire lifesavings in just two days,” one person wrote anonymously on Bitman, a Korean blockchain community, on May 14. “I repeatedly sold Luna at a loss, bought more to lower the average price and sold it at a loss again. After losing more than 100 million won [$78,000] that I struggled to save for years, I can neither eat nor sleep. I loathe myself.”  

Terra coins were algorithmically pegged to other currencies though arbitraged with Luna coins. When faith in the design evaporated in early May, Luna lost most of its value in a matter of days and TerraUSD, which is the Terra that tracks the dollar, dropped to about 10 cents. 

One man, who claims to have lost 2 billion won ($1.6 million) by investing in Luna, was under investigation after showing up at the house of Kwon Do-hyeong, one of the masterminds behind the Terra stablecoin scheme.    
   
“Kwon should officially apologize and announce some sort of plan using any means available, including using his own money,” the man told the local press. “There are some people around me who have actually lost their lives.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more about the cryptocurrency losses impacting South Korea at the link.

North Korea Continues Bitcoin Hacking Activities

| December 18, 2017

I really don’t understand the whole bitcoin trend, but obviously the North Koreans do because they continue to hack and make money from it:

South Korea’s spy agency suspects North Korea might be involved in recent hacking incidents related to cryptocurrency, according to sources on Saturday.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) is said to have secured evidence that the North was involved in stealing the personal information of some 30,000 people from Bithumb, the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, back in June, as well as robbing virtual money at another exchange Coinis in September.

The NIS reportedly confirmed that the same code used by Lazarus, a group accused of being behind the 2014 Sony hack, was used in the previous two cases.

The evidence is said to have been passed to the prosecution for further investigation. The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has been handling the former case, while the latter is being taken care of by local police.  [Yonhap]

North Korea Stole $88,000 of South Korean Bitcoin A Month for Two Years

| April 14, 2017

You have to hand it to the Kim regime, if there is an illegal way to make money they will find it:

North Korean hackers stole about 100 million Korean won, or $88,000, worth of bitcoin from South Korean exchanges every month from 2013 to 2015, Yonhap News Agency reports, citing Radio Free Asia.

“Cyber criminals have turned to bitcoin for money as it is very difficult to track them down,” Choi Sang-myong, a senior official at South Korea’s cybersecurity firm Hauri, told Free Asia Radio, according to Yonhap. “Since tracking down the culprits is very difficult, North Korea had jumped on the bandwagon of bitcoin extortion since around 2012.”  [Business Insider]

You can read more at the link.