Crypto Founder Jeffy Yu Faked His Own Death on a Live Stream

On Sunday, May 4, Jeffy Yu took his ain beingness connected a unrecorded stream. On Wednesday, helium was hanging retired astatine his parents’ house, live and well. The San Francisco Chronicle tracked down Yu, the laminitis of cryptocurrency token Zerebro, who had seemingly faked his ain decease successful melodramatic manner and fled successful an evident effort to some get retired of the crypto abstraction and currency successful connected the attraction that the communicative brought to his crypto projects.

Yu’s staged decease was captured connected video, which appeared to amusement him holding a weapon to his chin and seemingly pulling the trigger, causing the telephone to fall. While it was reported by CryptoSlate that the video was a portion of a unrecorded watercourse connected the memecoin tract Pump.fun, the tract denied that specified an lawsuit occurred connected its platform.

Shortly aft his evident death, an obituary for Yu appeared connected Legacy.com calling him a “Martyr of Imagination and Creativity,” and describing his beingness arsenic being “lived with intensity, brilliance, and a devotion to instauration that helium hoped would animate others for eternity.” The obituary rapidly disappeared from the tract and is nary longer available.

In summation to the glowing, apt self-authored obituary, Yu besides released different self-tribute: a memecoin dedicated to himself that was supposedly launched arsenic a effect of his evident death. “If you’re speechmaking this, it’s due to the fact that my 72 hr deadman’s power triggered truthful i’m not here, astatine slightest physically,” the connection read. It accompanied the motorboat of $LLJEFFY, which Yu referred to successful his motorboat connection arsenic “an eternal sedate successful cyberspace.” The coin rapidly climbed successful value arsenic crypto buyers jumped in.

And past the suspicions started. There was a batch of oddness surrounding Yu’s decease from the start, and immoderate started calling into question whether the full happening was an elaborate stunt. One X idiosyncratic noted that Yu appeared to bargain ads connected X for the memecoin to get much attention. Blockchain investigation enactment BubbleMaps spotted wealth moving from wallets associated with Yu—first $100,000 moved from his coin Zerebro to LLJEFFY, past different sell-off of $1.4 million worthy of Zerebro arsenic the worth of the coin started to ascent from the attraction brought by his death. Per Decrypt, LLJEFFY surged 2,115% aft release, reaching a marketplace headdress of astir $105 million.

By Wednesday, the jig was afloat up. The San Francisco Standard recovered Yu astatine his parents’ location successful the city, and helium freaked out. “I’ve been doxxed. I’ve been harassed. If you tin find me, different radical tin find me,” helium told the paper. “Now I person to determination my parents retired of present this week.” Given however overmuch helium seemed to person cashed retired during his little clip arsenic a ghost, it seems similar helium should beryllium capable to find them someplace nice.