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- TerraUSD founder Do Kwon has a history of dismissing his critics by labelling them "poor."
- His TerraUSD and luna projects are now crumbling as confidence evaporates from the tokens.
- Kwon mocked an economist who criticized TerraUSD's design by saying he doesn't "debate with poor people."
Crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon's TerraUSD stablecoin has crumpled and luna token has plunged 99%.
Now attention in the crypto community is turning to his habits of dismissing criticism of his projects by mocking detractors as "poor."
In July, Kwon mocked a British economist who criticized the so-called algorithmic stablecoin model.
Frances Coppola tweeted saying self-correction mechanisms — of the sort used by TerraUSD, also called UST — will fail when panicking investors are stampeding for the exit.
Kwon replied: "I don't debate the poor on Twitter, and sorry I don't have any change on me for her at the moment."
He was savagely putting down detractors just days before TerraUSD, which was the world's third-biggest stablecoin and was supposed to trade at $1, tumbled as low as $0.30.
"Anon, you could listen to CT influensooors about UST depegging for the 69th time. Or you could remember they're all now poor, and go for a run instead. Wyd," Kwon tweeted on May 9. CT refers to crypto Twitter.
Kwon and Terraform Labs, the company he co-founded and which is behind TerraUSD, did not respond to requests for comment.
TerraUSD is a so-called algorithmic stablecoin that was supposed to maintain its peg to $1 by encouraging traders to trade the asset in exchange for the luna cryptocurrency.
The project all but imploded this week when TerraUSD slid to well below the $1 mark, with the loss of confidence sending sister cryptocurrency luna tumbling from around $80 to below $0.05 in the space of a few days.
Neil Wilson, analyst at trading platform Markets.com and a long-time crypto skeptic, said: "It's all fugazi. They're made up assets."
He added: "There's been so much liquidity that entire new asset classes like crypto and NFTs had to be made up to absorb it. Now that liquidity is disappearing and inflation is ripping people want real, hard assets."