Next year, Netflix will release a documentary on the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange scandal. The film, titled Trust No One: The Hunt For The Crypto King, tells the story of the now-closed site CEO Gerald Cotten, who died mysteriously in 2018.
Cotten took with him to his grave the private keys from the wallets of the exchange, because of which $ 250 million of its reserves in the crypt were lost forever. Let’s talk about what is happening in more detail.
By tradition, let’s start with an explanation. QuadrigaCX is a cryptocurrency exchange that faced a shortage of funds in December 2018. The reason for this was the death of company CEO Gerald Cotten, which resulted in the loss of at least $ 145 million, which was initially announced .
The problem was that the site was storing funds in cold storage – that is, a device with no Internet access. In this case, the access code to the device was exclusively with Gerald. In this regard, his death also affected the platform’s investors.
Soon after, it became clear that the problems were much deeper than it seemed at first glance. In particular, the wallets of the exchange turned out to be empty , and the users of the exchange even wanted to get Cotten out of the grave to make sure that what was happening was true. Including due to the fact that the entrepreneur allegedly kept the keys to access the crypt in safe deposit boxes. Read more about what is happening in a separate article .
All this was enough to interest the representatives of the largest streaming platform in the world. Therefore, a film about cryptocurrency will soon appear on Netflix.
Netflix Film on Cryptocurrencies
In a press release, Netflix said the documentary “will follow a group of detective investors in the investigation into the suspicious death of cryptocurrency multimillionaire Jerry Cotten. It will also be about finding $ 250 million, which, in their opinion, he stole from them. «
The chronology of events around what happened to QuadrigaCX is still shrouded in many secrets. Some believe that Cotten is actually alive and simply faked his own death in order to escape with clients’ funds. As we have already noted, because of this, former exchange investors even demanded the exhumation of Cotten’s body from the Canadian police, but this request was denied.
Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX
There is another version, according to Decrypt . The CEO of QuadrigaCX allegedly actually died in 2018 from Crohn’s disease, but the circumstances of the loss of $ 250 million in reserves are different. According to a study by Ernst Young, Cotten siphoned off funds from QuadrigaCX long before his death and spent them on luxury goods – cars, planes and yachts.
To do this, Cotten created a fake account on the exchange and then bought his clients’ cryptocurrencies using fake Canadian dollars. Everything came to a head when the price of Ethereum , in which Cotten held most of the capital, collapsed in 2018 – and this led to huge losses for the founder of the trading platform.
Announcement and first poster of a new picture from Netflix on Twitter
Moreover, the reputation of Gerald Cotten’s name has been tarnished for a long time. Even before the advent of Bitcoin, he was an active participant in various fraudulent schemes and financial pyramids, one of which was even closed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. In other words, the founder of QuadrigaCX could initially have been a fraud, and the circumstance of his death only confused the investigation into the theft of funds from exchange clients.
However, in any case, the last word will be with the state representatives who are involved in this matter. At the same time, the film will only give this story out in a logical order of storytelling and with the participation of actors. Taking this into account, one can expect some exaggeration, but in general the film is positioned as a documentary.
We believe that this story may not affect the reputation of cryptocurrencies in the best way, since some still perceive it as a haven for scammers and criminals. On the other hand, the concept of independent and complete control of an asset will certainly interest newcomers who have not yet encountered digital assets. Therefore, the release of such a picture is likely only to attract the attention of a mass audience to the crypt.
