The failed algorithmic 2020 project, Basis Cash coins, was founded by Terraform Labs employees.
Basis Cash is an algorithmic stable coin project founded by anonymous “Rick” and “Morty” in 2020. The project was positioned as a decentralized stable coin with an algorithmic central bank. Basic Cash (BACK) has become one of the brightest events in the world of decentralized finance. Like UST, BAC sought to maintain a $1 peg with a code.
But the Basis Cash token did not reach its goal of pegging to the dollar, it fell below $ 1 at the beginning of 2021.
Probably, the creator of Terra, Do Kwon, worked under the pseudonym “Rick”. Several facts point to this. First, Hyungsuk Kang, a former Terraform Labs (TFL) engineer, said that Basic Cash was actually a side project of the first Terra creators, including himself and Kwon. Kang himself left TFL, with the goal of creating a competitor to Terra called Standard Protocol.
Secondly, one of the former employees of Basis Cash, on condition of anonymity, confirmed to CoinDesk that Do Kwon and TFL employees were behind the project.
Both Kang and an anonymous project employee pointed to the work of Do Kwon under the pseudonym “Rick Sanchez”. CoinDesk also studied in detail the internal chat log “Basis Cash Korea (BCK)”, in which Kwon called himself “Rick”.
Of course, Basic Cash did not reach the heights of Terra, the fall of which panicked the crypto market and investors, but today it is of no less interest. The value of Basic Cash at its peak had a blocked value (TVL) of $174 million in February 2021, which is two orders of magnitude lower than the TVL Terra of $30 billion before the historic drop.
Kwon himself does not comment on his affiliation to the Basis Cash project.
CoinDesk employees note that revealing the real name behind an online pseudonym is not an easy decision. “Our default position is to respect the privacy of pseudonymous actors with established reputations under their well-known handles unless there is an overwhelming public interest in revealing their real-world identities.” the publication’s article says.
To date, the death spiral of the UST stablecoin under the leadership of Kwon has created chaos in the cryptocurrency market. In this case, investors and the community should know that UST was not Kwon’s only attempt to build a successful algorithmic stablecoin. Perhaps Do Kwon, like cartoon Rick, would have needed a time machine to correct mistakes and prevent Luna from falling.
