Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon was one of the anonymous founders of the failed algorithmic stablecoin Basis Cash (BAC). This was reported by CoinDesk, citing sources.

Launched in the second half of 2020, the coin relied on arbitrage of the native BAS token to maintain a fixed price of $1. A similar mechanism is used for the flagship stablecoin of the Terra ecosystem – UST.

In January 2021, the price of BAC dropped below the $1 level, where it never broke again. At the time of writing, the coin is worth $0.006 (CoinGecko).

At its peak, BAC had a market cap of $93 million. In May 2022, the UST lost its peg against the dollar as soon as the price dropped below $0.3. On the eve of the crash, the stablecoin supply volume exceeded $18.6 billion.

Former Terraform engineer Hensok Kang [Hyungsuk Kang] He told the publication that Basis Cash is a spinoff from Terra’s creators, including Kwon.

“Basis Cash was not tested at the time, we weren’t even sure it would work,” the developer said.

According to him, Kwon called the project a pilot project.

Kang and another unnamed former employee told CoinDesk that Kwon was hiding behind the alias Rick Sanchez. The nickname of the second co-founder was Morty.

The publication revealed that the developers of Terraform’s Basis Cash modeled it after an earlier product called Basis. In 2018, the founder of this stablecoin, Nader Al-Naji, announced that the project was closed due to pressure. SEC and the return to investors of $133 million in attractive financing.

Recall that on May 11, Kwon presented a plan to restore the price of UST, against this background the prices of the LUNA coin fell below $ 1.