Source: Cointelegraph
Original: (These five cryptocurrency figures mysteriously disappeared, died, or fooled the entire industry)
Jeffy Yu, a developer of Zerebro, was found alive days after staging a fake suicide during a live stream and is now living at his parents' home in San Francisco. Following this live stream incident, a so-called 'posthumous issuance' meme coin briefly surpassed a market value of $100 million.
Yu's case is not the first incident in the cryptocurrency industry to blur the lines between real death and faked death.
From the mysteriously missing founder to the suspicious sealed coffin, this industry has long been filled with various dramatic exit strategies, leaving not the truth, but more questions.
Here are five disturbing cases—real occurrences, carefully orchestrated, or unresolved—that continue to spark discussion in the cryptocurrency world.
On May 4, a video clip of Yu live-streaming his 'suicide' went viral online. The footage showed him pulling the trigger after finishing a cigarette, and then the camera fell.
Hours later, a pre-arranged social media post announced the release of LLJEFFY coin, the meme coin referred to as his 'final artwork'. The coin's market value subsequently soared to nearly $105 million.
However, Yu did not truly disappear. The blockchain wallet associated with him remains active. A letter allegedly written by Yu revealed that this exit plan was a response to long-term harassment and extortion.
(San Francisco Standard) Reporters eventually found him at Yu's parents' home. When asked by reporters, he refused to comment on the suicide performance incident or whether he profited from it.
In the meme coin market, such extreme performances are not new. At the end of 2024, the live streaming feature of the Pump.fun platform triggered a series of shocking behaviors—including suicide threats and animal abuse—all aimed at inflating token prices. The platform subsequently shut down this feature and later reintroduced a more restrained version.
In February 2025, a programmer claiming to be Hu Lezhi allegedly destroyed 500 Ether (ETH) (then valued at about $1.3 million) and donated another 1,950 ETH (worth over $5 million) to various organizations, including WikiLeaks and the Ethereum Foundation.
These transactions were accompanied by a series of on-chain messages claiming that a hedge fund named WizardQuant (also known as Wonder Investments) was using 'brain-machine weapons' to control its employees—including Hu himself.
These messages read like a sci-fi horror novel. Hu claimed he had been a subject of mind control experiments since childhood and warned that humanity would become 'puppets or total slaves of digital machines' in the future.
In his last message, Hu stated that if they reached the ultimate state of becoming 'complete slaves to digital machines', they would choose to 'leave this world'. Some analysts interpreted these consecutive messages as an on-chain suicide note.
As of now, they have not reappeared. Unlike Yu's case, Hu's wallet has also shown no signs of activity.
On October 28, 2022, DeFi development expert Nikolai Mushegian posted a disturbing tweet: 'The CIA and Mossad and certain wealthy elites are running a sex trafficking blackmail ring... They will torture me to death.'
The next morning, he was found floating face down in the waters near his beach villa in Puerto Rico.
Mushegian was not just an ordinary cryptocurrency practitioner. He was an early developer of MakerDAO and a core architect of the stablecoin ecosystem.
He became increasingly paranoid—or, from different perspectives, increasingly insightful. Critics viewed this tweet as a manifestation of a mental health crisis, but others were not quick to downplay it.
The timing of his death sparked a series of speculations: assassination, targeted silencing, and even MKUltra-style mind control.
Officials ultimately classified it as an accidental drowning.
In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, the 30-year-old founder of the Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, reportedly died in India from Crohn's disease.
But a major problem arose: he was the only one able to access $190 million worth of crypto assets.
As news of his death spread, skepticism arose. There was no public autopsy report, his name was misspelled on the death certificate (Cotten was spelled as Cottan), the coffin was sealed, and more investors demanded DNA testing of his remains.
Quadriga officially declared bankruptcy in 2019. Thousands of customers were locked out of their funds. Eventually, investigators discovered that the cold wallet had been completely drained, prompting the auditing firm EY to begin asset recovery efforts.
Some people suspect Cotten had been running a Ponzi scheme for years and used his 'death' as the ultimate escape plan. These speculations have not been confirmed, but the official narrative still insists he died in a tragic incident, which has been confirmed by Indian authorities.
Ruja Ignatova, the co-founder of the $4 billion OneCoin scam who calls herself the 'Crypto Queen', has been missing since she flew from Sofia to Athens on Ryanair in October 2017.
Cotten left no access. Ignatova left no trace.
Since then, various rumors have circulated. Some claim she underwent plastic surgery and is living under a new identity, or is being protected by the Bulgarian mafia.
A Bulgarian investigative media outlet claimed that Ignatova was allegedly murdered in November 2018 on a yacht in the Ionian Sea, on the orders of Bulgarian crime boss Christopher Ros Amanatidis, and her body was dismembered and thrown into the sea to cover up her ties to OneCoin.
Recently, German officials reportedly speculated that Ignatova is living in a suburb of South Africa under the protection of a private security team.
Since 2022, Ignatova has been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Related: Former executive of crypto lending company Cred admits to wire fraud.
