Zerebro developer Jeffy Yu has been discovered alive at his mother and father’ residence in San Francisco, days after faking his suicide on a livestream that launched a supposed posthumous memecoin previous $100 million.
Yu’s case isn’t the primary time crypto has blurred the road between actual dying, faked dying and one thing in between.
From lacking founders to sealed caskets, the business has an extended historical past of exits that left behind extra questions than closure.
Listed below are five unsettling instances — actual, staged or unresolved — that proceed to hang-out the crypto world.
1. Jeffy Yu faked his dying, then his crypto pumped
A clip of Yu broadcasting his “suicide” circulated on Could 4. The video confirmed him smoking a cigarette earlier than pulling the set off, then the digital camera dropped.
Hours later, a scheduled social media put up introduced the posthumous launch of LLJEFFY, a memecoin described as his “closing artwork piece.” The coin surged to almost $105 million in market cap.
However Yu wasn’t lifeless. Blockchain wallets tied to him stored transferring. A duplicate of a letter — allegedly written by Yu — described the exit design as a response to ongoing harassment and blackmail.
Reporters from The San Francisco Normal ultimately found Yu at his parents’ home. He refused to touch upon the suicide stunt or whether or not he profited from it.
On the earth of memecoins, this sort of spectacle isn’t new. In late 2024, Pump.enjoyable’s livestream function triggered a wave of stunts — suicide threats, animal abuse and different stunning acts — to pump token costs. The corporate shut it down and later relaunched a toned-down model.
2. A crypto whistleblower’s descent into paranoia and potential dying
In February 2025, a suspected Chinese language programmer who known as themselves Hu Lezhi burned 500 Ether (ETH) (value round $1.3 million on the time) and donated one other 1,950 ETH (over $5 million) to numerous teams like WikiLeaks and the Ethereum Basis.
All of it got here with onchain messages alleging {that a} hedge fund known as WizardQuant (aka Kuande Funding) was utilizing “brain-computer weapons” to regulate its staff — together with Hu.
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The messages learn like sci-fi horror. Hu claimed he’d been a mind-control take a look at topic since childhood and warned of a future the place people have been nothing greater than “puppets or full slaves to the digital machine.”
In considered one of his final messages, Hu mentioned they’d “go away the world” in the event that they reached the ultimate stage of turning into a “full slave to the digital machine.” Some translated the sequence of messages as an onchain suicide note.
To this point, they haven’t re-emerged. And in contrast to Yu, Hu’s pockets hasn’t moved.
3. The crypto whiz and the cryptic tweet earlier than his dying
On Oct. 28, 2022, DeFi developer Nikolai Mushegian posted a chilling tweet: “CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are working some type of intercourse trafficking entrapment blackmail ring… they’ll torture me to dying.”
By the following morning, he was discovered face-down within the surf close to his seaside home in Puerto Rico.
Mushegian wasn’t a random crypto child. He was an early developer at MakerDAO and a key architect of the stablecoin ecosystem.
He was additionally more and more paranoid — or, relying on who you ask, more and more conscious. Critics dismissed the tweet as a psychological well being disaster, however others weren’t so fast to look away.
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The timing of his dying sparked a wave of theories: assassination, focused silencing or even MKUltra-style thoughts management.
Formally, it was dominated an unintentional drowning.
4. Crypto traders can’t consider QuadrigaCX founder’s dying
In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, the 30-year-old founding father of Canadian crypto change QuadrigaCX, reportedly died in India from Crohn’s illness.
However there was one large drawback: He was the one particular person with entry to $190 million in crypto.
As information of his dying unfold, so did the questions. There was no public post-mortem, his dying certificates misspelled his identify (spelling Cotten as Cottan), the casket was sealed, and a rising military of traders wished his physique exhumed for DNA testing.
Quadriga formally declared chapter in 2019. Hundreds of shoppers have been locked out of their funds. Finally, investigators found the chilly wallets have been empty, prompting auditor EY to begin recovery efforts.
Some suspected Cotten had run a Ponzi scheme for years and used his dying as the last word escape plan. The rumors haven’t been confirmed, however the official story stays that he died a tragic dying, as confirmed by Indian authorities.
5. Studies of Cryptoqueen’s dying are tremendously exaggerated
Self-styled “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova, co-founder of the $4-billion OneCoin rip-off, hasn’t been seen since she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens in October 2017.
Cotten left no entry. Ignatova left no hint.
Since then, rumors have swirled. Some say that she underwent cosmetic surgery and lives below a brand new id or that she’s being protected by the Bulgarian mafia.
A Bulgarian investigative outlet claims Ignatova was allegedly murdered in November 2018 on a yacht within the Ionian Sea and that her physique was dismembered and dumped overboard below the orders of Bulgarian crime boss Christophoros Amanatidis to cowl his ties to OneCoin.
Extra just lately, German officers reportedly assumed that Ignatova is in a South African suburb residing with private security.
Ignatova has been on the US FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list since 2022.
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