Zerebro’s developer Jeffy Yu found to be alive at his parents’ home in San Francisco, days after faking his suicide In a livestream that launched a must -have posthumous memecoin past $ 100 million.
Yu’s case was not the first time the crypto faded the line between real death, faked death and something in between.
From missing founders to sealed caskets, the industry has a long release history left more questions than closing.
Here are five no surprising cases – real, presented or unresolved – which continues to hate the crypto world.
1. Jeffy Yu faked his death, then his crypto pumped
A clip of yu Groadcasting his “suicide“Moving -Transfer on May 4. The video showed him smoking a cigarette before pulling the trigger, then the camera dropped.
Hours later, a scheduled social media post announced the posthumous launch of Lljeffy, a Memecoin described as his “final piece of art.” The coin has climbed nearly $ 105 million in the market cap.
But Yu is not dead. Blockchain wallets tied to him are constantly moving. A copy of a letter – Yu is said to have written – described the design of the exit in response to the constant harassment and biting.
Reporters from San Francisco Standard later Yu found at his parents’ house. He refused to comment on the suicide stunt or if he benefited from it.
In the world of Memecoins, this type of vision is not new. In late 2024, the pump.fun’s livestream feature tagged a wave of stunts – Suicide threats, animal abuse and other shocking acts – to pump token prices. The company closed it and eventually revived a toned-down version.
2. A descent of a whistleblower of a crypto in paranoia and possible death
In February 2025, a suspected Chinese programmer who called themselves Hu Lezhi burned 500 ether (Eth) (costs nearly $ 1.3 million in time) and ddonate another 1,950 ETH (over $ 5 million) in different groups such as Wikileaks and the Ethereum Foundation.
All of this is with Onchain messages claiming that a fence fund called the Wizardquant (aka Kuande Investment) uses “brain-brain weapons” to control its employees-including HU.
Related: 4chan rises from the dead: How crypto consumers’ imageboard moves
Messages read like sci-fi horror. Hu claimed that he had been a subject of mental control test since childhood and warned a future where people were nothing more than “puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine.”
In one of his final messages, Hu said they would “leave the world” if they reached the final stage of being a “complete slave to the digital machine.” Some translate the series of messages as a Remember suicide to onchain.
So far, they have never appeared again. And unlike Yu, Hu’s purse didn’t move.
3. The Crypto whiz and the mysterious tweet before he died
On October 28, 2022, Defi Developer Nikolai Mushegian posted a chilling tweet: “CIA and Mossad and Pedo Elite run some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring … They will torture me to death.”
The next morning, he was found face-down at Surf near his beach house in Puerto Rico.
Mushegian is not a random crypto child. He is an early developer in Makerdao and a major architect of the Stablecoin ecosystem.
He is also increasingly paranoid – or, depending on who you ask, the more you know. Critics have removed the tweet as a mental health crisis, but others do not get away quickly.
Related: 8 Crypto’s major companies express us expansion this year
The timing of his death caused a wave of theories: murder, targeted silencing or even control over the Mkultra style thinking.
Officially, it was ruled out by an accidental drowning.
4. Crypto investors cannot believe the death of the founder of Quadrigacx
In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, the 30 -year -old founder of the Canadian Crypto Exchange Quadrigacx, was reported to have died in India from Crohn’s disease.
But there is a huge problem: he is the only person who has access to $ 190 million in crypto.
As the news of his death spread, so did the questions. Without a public autopsy, his death certificate was unintentionally his name (Spelling Cotten as Cottan), the coffin was sealed, and a growing army of investors wanted his body to breathe for DNA testing.
Quadriga officially declared the losses in 2019. Thousands of clients were locked in their funds. Investigators later discovered that the cold wallets were empty, which motivated Auditor ey to start recovery efforts.
Some suspected cotten has run a Ponzi scheme for years and used his death as the final escape plan. The rumors were not confirmed, but the official story remains he died of a tragic death, as confirmed by Indian authorities.
5. Cryptoqueen’s death reports are excessively enlarged
The self-styled “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova, co-founder of the $ 4-billion Onecoin scam, has not been seen since he boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens in October 2017.
Cotten has no access. Ignatova left nothing.
Since then, rumors have sank. Some say he has undergone plastic surgery and lives under a new identity or that he is protected by the Bulgarian Mafia.
An investigative outlet of Bulgaria claims Ignatova was said to have been killed in November 2018 in a yacht in the Ionian Sea and that his body was abolished and thrown under the commands of Bulgaria’s crime boss Christophoros Amanatidis to cover his relationship with Onecoin.
Recently, German officials reportedly assumed that Ignatova was in a South Africa suburb living with private security.
Ignatova is in the US FBI’s 10 mostly desired listing since 2022.
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