The crypto industry has seen the worst of its days in 2022. At first, there was a slew of collapses of some of the major cryptocurrency exchanges. Then it was followed by a series of crypto billionaire deaths, which shook the entire industry and created social media buzz.
Who would have thought that an industry which has seen all kinds of online thefts, hacks, and collapses over the years will now be marred by untimely deaths?
The phenomenon of crypto billionaires dying began with the death of Nikolai Mushgian of MakerDAO on Oct. 2022. The subsequent cryptocurrency billionaire death that followed was that of Javier Biosca in Spain on Nov. 22. Immediately after that, on Nov. 23, Tiantian Kullander of Amber Group was found dead in his sleep.
As the industry was reeling with the death of 3 established entrepreneurs from the digital asset industry, another crypto billionaire found dead was the Russian origin Vyacheslav Taran of Libertex, who died in a helicopter crash.
Apart from these four crypto billionaires dying, there are several other mysterious deaths in the digital currency industry. The latest one making the rounds is that of Park Mo, the vice president of the Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Vidente, the largest shareholder in the crypto exchange Bithumb. He was lying dead in front of his house in the morning.
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Let’s dive into the details of the billionaires who have died.
This series of unfortunate events of crypto billionaires dying started with the sudden death of Nikolai Mushegian, who was only 29 years old when he passed away in mysterious circumstances and was found on the Condado beach in San Juan.
He was the co-founder of MakerDAO, a platform that specializes in crypto lending. He also founded the decentralized stablecoin called Dai.
On Oct. 28, 2022, the crypto billionaire’s dying tweet mentioned that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and C.I.A. were conspiring against him with the help of a sex trafficking and blackmail ring they ran in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Islands.
He also mentioned that he was honey-trapped by his girlfriend, a spy in disguise, and they were planning to murder him by torturing him.
A Puerto Rican newspaper then reported that the police had informed that the 29-year-old cryptocurrency developer Nikolas Mushegian was swept by the strong ocean currents and found dead on a beach near Condado, San Juan, in Puerto Rico in the morning. It was close to its $6 million beach house.
That particular beach is infamous for strong currents, and there have been precedents of at least eight other drownings recently.
Nikolai has often been described as paranoid but was also a brilliant visionary entrepreneur at the same time. It has come to the public domain that his family has accepted his death as an unfortunate drowning event.
Javier Biosca, 50, was a provincial Spanish native who used to run small businesses in the locality until he became an early adopter of Bitcoin as an individual investor.
He was a web designer by profession who developed a program that would automate the trading of cryptocurrencies with the help of bots.
He then founded the Algorithms Group in London, an investment platform that would engage investors in the upcoming and growing crypto market.
He is known to have poised himself as a quiet, soft-spoken person with the attitude of an accountant.
However, one thing led to another, and he was being investigated for the biggest cryptocurrency fraud in Spain until he was found dead on Nov.22, 2022, in Estepona, Spain.
It mainly was the ordinary people looking to multiply their wealth that fell prey to his Ponzi scheme, but, Biosca didn’t stop there and set up a P.R. team to attract more wealthy clients so that he could scale up the business.
However, a complaint was filed by several Algorithms Group clients, based on which he was arrested in March 2021.
The charges included fraud, money laundering, document forgery, and operating a criminal organization.
He spent 8 months behind bars while losing 40 pounds in weight. He even suffered a thorough beating from other inmates before getting out on bail of $1.04 million posted anonymously. The bond was ultimately revoked as it was established that he could not repay the vanished funds.
Javier was in deep trouble as he had betrayed and defrauded the Russian and Bulgarian mobsters and was afraid to return to prison. He was so afraid of them that he jumped from the 5th floor of a hotel and committed suicide in Estepona, Spain.
Tiantian Kullander was the co-founder of the crypto company Amber Group.
It was a piece of shocking news in the crypto world when people came to know that Tiantian Kullander passed away in his sleep at the age of 30 on Nov. 23, 2022
He founded Amber in Hong Kong with his former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley colleagues.
He was often referred to as a pioneer and a thought leader in the digital asset space. He quickly turned his enterprise into a multibillion-dollar firm and was due to raise even further funding.
He was even featured in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his extraordinary achievements.
Vyacheslav Taran, 53, the Russian billionaire, met with a terrible helicopter accident where he succumbed to his injuries.
He died on Nov. 25, 2022, after the helicopter crashed near the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer in France after it took off from Lausanne, Switzerland, and was heading towards Monaco.
The chopper was piloted by an experienced 35-year-old pilot in good weather conditions, but unfortunately, it went down.
Vyacheslav was the founder of Forex Club and the president of the Group trading platform, Libertex.
A news agency France Bleu reported that a second passenger was also scheduled to fly along with Taran in the same helicopter but canceled at the last minute. No details are available about the identity of that other passenger.
UNIAN, a Ukrainian news agency, speculated without evidence that Taran had ties with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Services. He also alleged that he was associated with the S.V.R. foreign espionage agency and was laundering Russian funds via crypto.
An investigation has been ordered to identify the cause of the death as speculations are flying in from all directions, including a pro-Kremlin media outlet from Russia even claiming that Taran had enemies lurking in Russia. The Russian Embassy also confirmed the news of his death and mentioned that his family had been informed.
All these crypto billionaires dying has created a storm in the cryptocurrency industry, and some of the other earlier deaths that people in the crypto space are also talking about are as follows:
One of the earliest deaths under suspicious circumstances in the crypto industry was that of Autumn Radtke, 28, who died in 2014. She was the founder of the currency exchange First Meta Pte Ltd.
As cited by Singapore’s Straits Times, no foul play was involved in her death, and she told her friends confidently that she was suffering from stress.
She was also looking into ways to commit suicide before she passed away. Her death was ruled a suicide by the coroner.
One of the most controversial crypto billionaires dying in this field was the founder of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Quadriga CX, Gerald Cotten, who died in 2018 during his honeymoon visit to India.
According to Globe and Mail from Canada, he died due to his illness, i.e., Crohn’s disease, and his wife Jennifer Robertson returned to Canada with his body.
Quadriga was worth around $200 million and had all the Quadriga accounts’ passwords. At least 100,000 customers were affected.
As an investigation was launched against him, it was discovered that Quadriga was nothing but a Ponzi scheme that mishandled customer funds by creating fake accounts, showing them fake funds, and using the customer’s real money for actual trades. Many conspired that he faked his death and ran away with customer funds.
Matthew Mellon also died in the same year as Gerald Cotten in 2018.
He was a banking heir and a billionaire in the crypto space. He was valued at $1 billion approximately at the time of his death.
He was rumored to have a drug problem, and as per an anonymous source from the Daily Mail, he had made a lot of enemies as hundreds of millions of dollars of user funds were missing, and as a result, he may have been murdered.
Mircea Popescu, the Bitcoin investor from Romania, was found dead in Costa Rica in 2021. Teletica, the Costa Rican broadcaster, reported that he was swept off the coast due to a strong current. Popescu owned almost 30,000 bitcoins and was valued at almost $2 billion at his death.
Popescu mentioned in his blog Trilema that he founded MPEx in 2012 as a “Bitcoin Securities Exchange” but was later investigated by U.S. S.E.C. in 2014.
There were a lot of recent speculation and controversies revolving around his death due to the striking similarity with Nikolai Mushegian. Still, based on all the available information, it appears to be an accident.
Although there is no correlation between the suspicious deaths of these people apart from the fact that they all belonged to the same industry, the manner of their deaths in such a short period has added fire to the fuel in terms of different conspiracy theories being peddled. One such user compared the death to that of mafias taking revenge.
Another user sarcastically mentioned that these deaths cannot be connected to the central banking hierarchy as they are “trustworthy.”
Someone spilled their doubts about the sources of information but also accepted that so many deaths under such inexplicable circumstances are suspicious.
A Reddit user speculated that these crypto entrepreneurs might be faking their deaths. At the same time, another mentioned that they might be doing this to run away with customer funds and live under pseudo names.
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The untimely deaths of these prominent crypto billionaires have sparked intrigue and a wave of speculation, creating a lot of doubt and uncertainty in the crypto industry.
While the incidents are undoubtedly concerning, it is crucial to maintain a measured approach and await official investigations to shed light on the true causes behind the tragedies of these crypto billionaires dying.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The author’s opinions are their own and should not be taken as a recommendation to invest in any particular product or service. It is strongly advised that you consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions. Investing always carries risk, and it is up to each individual to consider their options and make informed choices carefully.
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