According to a news report by CoinDesk Korea, Terra Labs may hold nearly $3.6 billion in USDT and UST. The news report alleges that the funds might be utilized for exchange and DeFi pricing manipulation or money laundering. However, authorities will have to check with exchanges Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, and Kucoin to confirm the same.
CEO of TerraForm Labs, Do Kwon, has already revealed his holdings through his SNS or Terra Foundation. These include LUNA (Terra), UST (Terra USD), and BTC (Bitcoin). The corporation was supposed to protect prices using cash held by them in the case of UST (Terra USD) deflation.
However, on-chain data analysis revealed that wallets owned or controlled by TerraForm Labs and Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) included a large sum of money with unknown sources and information.
The total amount of illicit monies discovered in this manner, including UST (Terra USD) and USDT (Tether), was $3.6 billion. In particular, the report found that the money was utilized to manipulate markets and launder money for the current LUNC (the previous LUNA) on DeFi and controlled exchanges.
After the Terra project crashed on May 7, blockchain security companies Uppsala Security and Coindesk Korea used on-chain data forensics to examine how the network collapsed. They monitored the circulation of coins around a wallet that several researchers have identified as the origin of the Terra crash. The wallet address is 0x8d47f08ebc5554504742f547eb721a43d4947d0a.
Consequently, it verified that Terraform Labs and Luna Foundation Guard had transferred USDT, USDC, and UST worth $7.4 billion into two Binance wallets. On-chain data was used to demonstrate that it was a wallet owned or controlled by (LFG).
Uppsala Security and CoinDesk Korea did additional on-chain data analysis to monitor the flow of unidentified money worth roughly $3.6 billion.
Coincidentally, there were signs of UST deflation. On May 6, a day before LUNC plunged, 300 million USDTs (about 380 billion won) were deposited into LFG’s exchange wallet, which could not be identified, and were found to have escaped to another Binance Exchange Wallet. As this fund was transferred from the exchange wallet, it is no longer possible to track it with on-chain data analysis.