Jeffy Yu, a Zerebro developer, was found alive at his parents’ home in San Francisco, a few days after pretending to be suicide on a live broadcast, which allegedly introduced memecoin $ 100 million posthumously.
The case of Yu is not the first time the crypto blurred the border between real death, forged death and something in between.
From missing founders to sealed gracious, the industry has a long history of exits that have left more questions than closing.
Here are five disturbing cases – real, exhibited or unsolved – which still persecute the cryptographic world.
1
The clip from Yu broadcast his “suicide” on May 4. The film showed that he smokes a cigarette before pulling the trigger and then dropped the camera.
A few hours later, the planned post in social media announced the posthumous premiere of Lljeffy, Memecoin described as his “last work of art”. The coin increased to almost $ 105 million in market capitalization.
But Yu wasn’t dead. The blockchain portfolio attached to it was still moving. A copy of the letter – allegedly written by YU – described the exit project as a response to constant harassment and blackmail.
Reporters from the San Francisco standard finally found Yu at his parents’ house. He refused to comment on suicide or whether he gained it.
In the Memecoins world, this type of performance is not recent. At the end of 2024, the LiveStream function lived the company closed it and later launched a subdued version.
2
In February 2025, a suspicious Chinese programmer who called Hu Lezhi, burned 500 ether (ETH) (worth about $ 1.3 million at that time) and donated another 1950 ETH (over $ 5 million) to various groups, such as Wikileaks and Ethereum Foundation.
All this was with messages in the area, claiming that the Hedge Fund called Wizardquant (Alias Kuande Investment) used “brain-Computer weapons” to control its employees-in this hu.
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The messages sounded like a science fiction horror. Hu claimed that he was the subject of a mind control test since childhood and warned about the future in which people were nothing more than “puppets or complete slaves of a digital machine”.
In one of his last messages, Hu said that he would “leave the world” if they reach the last stage of becoming a “complete slave of a digital machine”. Some have translated a series of messages as Watch out for Onchain suicide.
So far they have not appeared again. And unlike Yu, Hu’s wallet did not move.
3. Krypto Whiz and cryptic tweet before death
On October 28, 2022, the Defi developer, Nikolai Mushagian, published a frozen frozen tweet: “CIA, Mossad and Pedo Elite lead a ring with imprisonment of sexual trade … they intend to torture me to death.”
The next morning he was found on waves near the beach house in Puerto Rico.
Mushegian was not a random cryptographic child. He was an early programmer in Makerdao and a key architect of Stablecoin ecosystem.
He was also more and more paranoid – or, depending on who you ask, more and more aware. Critics rejected the tweet as a crisis in the field of mental health, but others were not so quickly inverted.
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The time of his death caused a wave of theory: murder, targeted mute, and even control of the mind in the style of the Multi.
Officially considered accidental drowning.
4. Cryptographic investors cannot believe in the death of the founder of Quadrigacx
In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, a 30-year-old founder of the Canadian QuadRigacx cryptographic exchange, apparently died in India because of Crohn’s disease.
But there was one huge problem: he was the only person with access to $ 190 million in Krypto.
As the news about his death, the question is considered. There was no public autopsy, his death certificate incorrectly wrote his name (Cottan spelling as Cottan), the casket was sealed, and the growing army of investors wanted to exhum his body for testing DNA.
Quadriga officially announced bankruptcy in 2019. Thousands of customers were closed with their funds. Ultimately, investigators discovered that the frigid wallets were empty, which prompted the EY auditor to start recovery.
Some suspected Cotten has been running the Ponzi program for years and used his death as the final escape plan. Rumors have not been confirmed, but the official story remains that the tragic death died, which was confirmed by the Indian authorities.
5. Reports about the death of Cryptoqueen are very exaggerated
The self -proclaimed “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatov, co -founder of Onecoin fraud worth $ 4 billion, was not observable since she got into the flight of Ryanair from Sofia to Athena in October 2017.
Cotten has no access. Ignatova left no trace.
Since then, rumors have swirled. Some say that she has undergone plastic surgery and lives under a recent identity or that she is protected by the Bulgarian mafia.
Bulgarian Investigative Store claims Ignatova was allegedly murdered in November 2018 on the yacht in the Ionical Sea and that her body was fragmented and thrown overboard under the orders of the Bulgarian crime chose Christophoros Amanatidis to cover his ties with Onecin.
Recently, German officials supposedly assumed that Ignatova is for a flat in South Africa with private security.
Ignatova has been on the list of 10 most sought after FBI in the USA since 2022.
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