A US court has sentenced Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to 15 years in prison, reports Inner City Press.
Judge Engelmayer: 15 years is the least I can impose. Mr. Kwon, please rise… It is the judgment of the court that you are to serve a sentence of 15 years, with credit for time serviced in the US — and 17 months and 8 days served in pre-extradition custody
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) December 11, 2025
Judge Paul Engelmayer handed down the sentence to Kwon for his role in the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, which led to investors losing $40 billion in 2022. The court considered the time the entrepreneur spent in custody in the US and Montenegro prior to extradition.
The prosecution agreed not to seek more than 12 years of imprisonment. In his home country of South Korea, he faced a potential 40-year sentence. Kwon himself deemed a five-year term to be a fair punishment.
According to a statement from the US Department of Justice, the indictment included nine counts, such as conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering, market manipulation, and securities fraud. The maximum sentence was 130 years.
In August, Kwon pleaded guilty only to fraud and conspiracy, waiving his right to a jury trial.
In delivering the sentence, Engelmayer described 15 years as the minimum permissible term under the circumstances. The judge noted the possibility of parole and the plan for victim restitution as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
“Your fraud was of unprecedented severity. For four years, you deliberately misled the market. You claimed to have created a stablecoin. You stated there was a special reserve to support its value. When the dollar peg collapsed, you did not acknowledge the crash but turned to Jump Trading. This was the pivotal moment. You made a choice. You chose the path of deceit,” Engelmayer emphasized during the sentencing.
In his final statement, Kwon noted that he fully accepts responsibility and blames no one else for what happened.
He acknowledged mistakes in the system’s design and expressed hope that his experience would deter other crypto project founders from a similar fate.
“I do not blame anyone else for my presence here today. I will not claim that my actions met industry standards. If they did, those were poor standards, and as a former market leader, I bear responsibility for that,” he said.
Back in March 2024, a US court sentenced the founder of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, to 25 years in prison.