After the crypto market's death spiral plunged the currency to $0, the Luna founder's wife was placed under emergency protection.
While TerraUST creator Do Kwon attempted to save the collapsing stablecoin, his wife allegedly sought police protection, the latest setback for a cryptocurrency that some worry would create a "Lehman moment" for the industry.
An anonymous individual broke into her apartment building on Friday, rang the doorbell to check whether Kwon was home, and then left after she confirmed he wasn't, according to South Korean news source MoneyToday.
After requesting emergency protection, Kwon's wife has now been given security, according to police in Seoul's Seongdong-gu district.
The news comes as the value of Luna, the coin that supported and maintained TerraUST's dollar peg, plummets.
People were suicidal after Luna, according to several investors who controlled the company.
Kwon, who had a reputation for dismissing and criticising opponents of his enterprise, has now been compared to Elizabeth Holmes, who was found guilty of fraud for her role in the Theranos scam.
TerraUST was created to trade at a one-to-one exchange rate with the US dollar, but without any sort of genuine collateral to support its value, like Tether does.
Instead, it used an algorithm to create and then destroy its own supply of Luna coins, which functioned as a sort of shock absorber.
The protocol was supposed to stabilise the value when the peg began to fail by minting more Luna, but the prolonged attack meant it was being minted at an exponential pace.
With the supply of Luna reaching Zimbabwe-like levels of hyperinflation, Binance, a prominent global crypto exchange, delisted Luna on Friday, in what some are dubbing the "Luna Brothers moment," a reference to the 2008 Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers.
The action spurred rumours that BlackRock and Citadel were behind it, prompting cryptocurrency exchange Gemini to disavow any involvement in the peg strike.
Citadel then denied the charges, telling Fortune, "Citadel was not involved in this scenario and does not trade stablecoins, including Terra UST."
Ran Neuner, a crypto YouTuber from South Africa, told Bitcoin influencer Layah Heilpern that he was suffering the effects of being "totally irresponsibly long" in Luna.
He said that the collapse of a tier 1 currency on par with Ether or Ripple XRP—valued at $20 billion and sustaining a bigger $60 billion ecosystem built on top—was unprecedented and would prolong the digital asset bear market.
In a webcast, he informed her, "There has never been an occurrence in crypto where $80 billion was wiped out of the market, never." "A lot of individuals, even crypto enthusiasts, lost a lot of money on Luna."
Kwon had put out a strategy on Wednesday.
On Thursday, his Terraform Labs business attempted to restore regular operation on the blockchain network, only to abandon the endeavour after just 4,089 new blocks were put to the chain.
Citadel has issued a statement, which has been included to the article.