The origin of the incident dates back to a large-scale hacking incident that occurred in the virtual asset project ‘Humanity Protocol’. The Humanity (H) token issued by this project suffered a security incident in which a large number of secret keys were leaked when an internal employee's laptop was infected with malware. As a result, the token value instantly plummeted by more than 80%, and a huge amount of assets worth about 54.4 billion won evaporated, causing many investors to panic. Angry investors fired harsh criticism at the project's founder and CEO, Terence Kwak. However, Terence Kwak, who was supposed to take responsibility and resolve the situation, showed irresponsible behavior by suddenly replacing his SNS account profile picture with Kwak Tube's face and then disappearing.

Terence Kwak's bizarre behavior immediately caused international misunderstanding. Overseas virtual asset investors and some influencers who did not know the full story of the situation firmly believed that the person in the profile was Terence Kwak himself. They captured photos of Kwak Tube, shared them on social media, and began pouring out criticism, saying, “This person is the culprit who embezzled tens of billions of won.” Even in a post by Jack Due to the coincidence of the familiarity of the name Kwak Tube and the surname ‘Kwak’, investors around the world fell into the collective mistake of accusing the popular Korean YouTuber as the main culprit of the fraud without any suspicion.

Kwak Tube, who belatedly recognized this fact, immediately launched a strong explanation through his SNS. He spoke both English and Korean and drew a line, saying, “I am only a Korean YouTuber and have no relationship with Coin.” In particular, he could not hide his absurdity and resentment, saying, “I have been suffering from coin fraud all my life,” and expressed his bitter feelings, saying, “I am suffering this kind of damage because I am Mr. Kwak.” Kwak Tube's explanation, which he witnessed in real time as his photos were being misused for crimes, was an inevitable choice to address a situation in which he was unintentionally branded as a criminal. This clearly shows how easily a person's brand image can be damaged in the digital space and how difficult it is to repair the damage.

There are many points that need to be pointed out in order to dismiss this incident as simply an incident. It is not yet clear why Terence Kwak stole Kwak Tube's photo, but industry experts raise the possibility that he randomly selected similar images to avoid responsibility or intentionally tried to cause confusion. Considering that Humanity Protocol is a project with the goal of protecting personal information in the era of artificial intelligence, the founder's act of theft is in itself a serious moral bankruptcy and irony. In an environment where the trust system of digital platforms can be fundamentally shaken, we are now living in an era where the public cannot blindly trust even a single photo of a celebrity.