Crypto Man, written and directed by Harry Hyun, introduced us to an entrepreneur with big dreams who wanted to make it to the top one day. Though I really liked the subtle execution, there were moments where I couldn’t really understand the motivation of the characters. I would have liked the narrative to dig deeper into the characters and give us a chance to understand them better. That said, let’s find out what Crypto Man was about and if it was based on a true story.
Spoiler Alert
Is The Film Based On A True Story?
Yes, Crypto Man is inspired by the real-life story of the South Korean business tycoon, Kwon Do-hyung, aka Do Kwon. As stated at the beginning of the film, the makers have taken certain creative liberties, changed the names of the characters, and also added a few fictional subplots to dramatize the narrative. But if we take the essence of the narrative into consideration, the film stays true to the real-life story of South Korea’s fallen crypto king. Born in 1991, Do-hyung always had big dreams, and one day, he decided that he wanted to climb to the top of the food chain and experience what it was like to lead an opulent lifestyle. But in his greed to earn more, the man made a lot of mistakes, and he not only ruined his life, he also destroyed the lives of the innocent people who trusted him and invested in his cryptocurrency, Luna. It is true that Do-hyung manipulated the system and found a way to get funding and grants from the South Korean government. When he started his first company, the parents of the co-founder happened to be the members of the collegium that approved the funds.
Do-hyung co-founded Terraform Labs Pvt Ltd, the parent company of two cryptocurrencies, TerraUSD and Luna, together with Daniel Shin (who was acquitted of all charges in the year 2025). Shin’s name in the film is changed to Kevin Kim, who saw something in Do-hyung and gave him his support and investment to start a venture. As stated in the film, Do-hyung was found guilty of a multibillion-dollar crypto asset security fraud, and the company collapsed on 22nd May 2022, wiping out an estimated $43 billion from the market. A common man who was shown dreams of compounding his profits realized that he had made the biggest blunder of his life by trusting the scamster. On 23rd March 2023, Do-hyung was arrested in Montenegro while he was trying to fly to Dubai using fake documents. His plan was to go to a country from which he couldn’t be extradited to the United States of America. Terraform Labs’ headquarters was based in Singapore, so ideally the US should not have had any say in the matter. But the issue was that the US bought the token (a crypto asset )to fund the business, which in layman’s terms meant that they had a stake in the business. After his arrest, he came back to South Korea, where he stayed for some time before being extradited to the United States of America. In 2025, Do-hyung pled guilty to two counts of fraud, and since he had signed a plea deal, the prosecutors promised not to demand a sentence exceeding 12 years. Do-hyung is currently awaiting trial, and his final sentence will be declared by the court on 11th December 2025.
What happened between Do-hyun and his mother?
Park Ok-ja always prayed to the Almighty that her son, Yang Do-hyun, didn’t turn out to be like her husband. We were not told much about where her husband was and why he had decided to abandon the family. But I believe he wanted to do something big, and he made certain selfish choices that took him away from the family. Do-hyun, from a very early age, wanted to do big things in life, and he didn’t care what approach he took as long as it gave him the results. In school, he cheated in the examination, as he wanted to get into a good university. The real-life Do-hyun studied at Stanford University, but in the film it is shown that he did all his education in South Korea itself. Do-hyun had a student in his class who was disabled, and he always felt that it was unfair that he got financial aid/support from the state when he came from such an affluent background. Do-hyun’s mind was always scheming and plotting, and he kept looking for shortcuts to earn money quickly. His mother could never really understand where he was coming from, and slowly her fears turned into reality. She saw that her son had turned out exactly like her husband. She didn’t tell him anything; she never confronted him, but she knew deep down that he was involved in some fraudulent activities. The poor woman worked as a nurse, and Do-hyun had told his seniors and even his co-founder, Kevin Kim, whom he met at a later stage, that his mother was a doctor. Even though Do-hyun blamed society for being classist, he was himself quite status conscious. In fact, when he opened his company, Mommy Coin, he never told anybody that the woman who came to deliver his food was not his maid, but his mother. I think a man who feels ashamed of his own parents and who cannot accept in public who his mother is can never prosper. In fact, Do-hyun’s best friend, Kang Ji-woo, who had followed him blindly since college, decided to part ways with him when he became aware of that reality. I don’t think that his mother even took a penny from him because she would have known how he had earned it. She loved her son, and she did nothing to deserve such treatment from his end.
How did Do-hyun meet Kevin Kim?
Once Do-hyun entered college, he realized that young entrepreneurs were given grants, and he could apply for them and get a chance to earn some quick cash. Do-hyun had found a loophole in the system, and he realized that he would literally get a grant, time and again, even when his business failed. Do-hyun had met his friend Kang Ji-woo at that point, after they had started helping their seniors and other students in tax accounting frauds. Do-hyun had a sharp mind, but if he would have applied it in some noble and honest venture, things wouldn’t have ended the way they did. Yang Do-hyun applied to the K-com Youth startup program and got funds to start his own entrepreneurial journey. I don’t think he ever had the intention of starting a business and making a profit, as he covered his expenses using the government funds, and moreover, he had become an expert in accounting fraud, which made it easy for him to not come onto the radar of the authorities. Kevin Kim decided to partner with Do-hyun, as he saw something in him. He knew that the boy had launched failed ventures, but he trusted his vision. He liked his ambition, but he had no clue that it would turn into greed and arrogance and ruin everything that he had created in a span of decades. Kevin Kim wanted Do-hyun to succeed, but he didn’t want him to be reckless in his approach. Soon, Mommy Coin was launched, and it promised to change the destinies of the South Korean people. Do-hyun violated laws without even batting an eye. He made a mockery of the entire legal framework, and at the end, even Kevin Kim decided to part ways with him and make it clear to the public that he had no part to play in the decision taken by the Mommy Coin CEO and his team.
Was Do-hyun found guilty of fraud?
There came a time when Kevin Kim realized that the US-based financial supervisory services would take strict action against them if they didn’t take any precautionary measures. When those meetings happened with the US authorities, Do-hyun, in his own arrogance, didn’t behave properly, even after Kim told him again and again to just keep quiet if he couldn’t contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. But Do-hyung felt invincible at that moment, and he felt that nobody, not even the US authorities, could touch him. That was the delusion that he harbored, and he ended up paying a huge cost for it. Strict action was taken, and Do-hyung had to go into hiding. He was still a wealthy man, and as his lawyer, who was also an alumnus of the school he’d attended, said, he could have made a fresh start. But Do-hyun still, at that juncture, believed that he had done no wrong. Do-hyun had surprisingly asked his lawyer to get him information about his disabled fellow student, Sangsoo, but the lawyer told him that there was no disabled student named Sangsoo who studied at that school at that point in time. At the beginning of the film, we saw that Do-hyun often cursed his colleague, and he told him that he didn’t deserve to get the state support funds (as stated earlier). There was a scene where Sangsoo got up from his wheelchair, and it seemed he was just putting on an act of being disabled. I personally didn’t understand what the makers wanted to show there. Either he was actually faking, or it was merely a figment of Do-hyun’s imagination. I believe it was on the advice of his attorney that Do-hyun realized that the odds didn’t favor him. He pled guilty, though his partner, Kevin Kim, was acquitted of all charges. As the news of Do-hyun’s fraudulent activities spread through the entire nation, his mother just sat helplessly in front of the television set, probably blaming herself or her stars and not being able to understand where she went wrong.
