Meet Ju Ki-young, a South Korean tech entrepreneur who co-founded the blockchain analysis firm CryptoQuant.
About Ju: Born in 1992, Ju, an alumnus of Pohang University of Science and Technology, co-founded CryptoQuant with fellow alumni in April 2019. Before becoming its CEO and entering the blockchain sphere, he was a software engineer who offered analyses for businesses.
What CryptoQuant does: CryptoQuant, which South Korea‘s Chosun Daily dubs as the “Bloomberg of Crypto,” provides on-chain and market data gathered from blockchain and major cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The company keeps track of every transaction that occurs in the market.
Making a name: Using on-chain data analysis, CryptoQuant says it was the first to notice the impending crash of the Terra-Luna cryptocurrency in May 2022 and the potential bankruptcy of FTX months after.
Ju raised the red flag in an X post, pointing out how Terraform Labs’ nonprofit, Luna Foundation Guard, transferred around 37,000 Bitcoins (approximately $1.59 billion in today’s exchange) to Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange. A few days after making the post, Terraform Labs’ Luna, the sister token of stablecoin TerraUSD, crashed to virtually $0.
With its success, CryptoQuant signed a partnership deal with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group), the world’s largest derivatives and options exchange, as the latter’s on-chain data provider in July of the same year.
Helping solve crimes: Ju hopes that CryptoQuant could also aid governments and financial authorities in tracking cyber financial crimes. In 2019, the company used its expertise to uncover the e-wallets of those involved in the “Nth Room” scandal, leading to the arrest of masterminds Cho Ju-bin, Moon Hyung-wook and others.
