SEC Investigating Company Behind TerraUSD Stablecoin: Report

The digital currency collapsed in dramatic fashion last month, functionally losing all of its value.

AccessTimeIconJun 9, 2022 at 4:59 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 6:19 p.m. UTC
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into whether Terraform Labs – the Singapore-registered firm that created the terraUSD (UST) stablecoin and luna (LUNA) token – violated U.S. laws regarding how it marketed the crypto coins, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Terra and luna functionally lost all of their value last month. Terraform tried relaunching luna, creating a new token and rebranding the original to luna classic (LUNC).

According to Bloomberg, members of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement are investigating whether investor protection rules were broken through Terraform's marketing of the tokens.

The agency was already investigating Terraform founder Do Kwon in connection with his role in building the Mirror Protocol, which allows users to trade tokens representing synthetic stocks.

Terraform Labs did not immediately return CoinDesk's request for comment. Kwon told Bloomberg that he was not aware of any SEC probes into UST and had not heard from the agency.

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Nikhilesh De

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation. He owns marginal amounts of bitcoin and ether.


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