Zerebro developer Jeffy Yu has been found alive at his parents’ home in San Francisco

Days after faking his suicide on a livestream that launched a supposed posthumous memecoin past $100 million.

The world of crypto is no stranger to bizarre and tragic tales, and the tale of Jeffy Yu, a developer for the Zerebro blockchain, is one for the ages.

As reported by The San Francisco Standard, a clip of Yu staging his own suicide went viral on May 4. In the video, he’s seen calmly smoking a cigarette before pulling the trigger of a handgun as the camera drops.

A few hours later, a scheduled social media post announced the posthumous launch of LLJEFFY, a memecoin that Yu described as his “final art piece.” The token quickly surged to nearly $105 million in market cap.

But it seems that Yu wasn’t planning on kicking the bucket just yet. Despite the tear-jerking scenes of his apparent suicide, blockchain wallets tied to Yu continued to move after his supposed death.

A copy of a letter — allegedly written by Yu — described the exit design as a response to ongoing harassment and blackmail.

After days of investigation, reporters from The San Francisco Standard eventually found Yu at his parents’ sunny San Francisco home. The developer refused to comment on the suicide stunt or whether he profited from it.

In the realm of memecoins, this kind of spectacle isn’t entirely new. Back in 2024, Pump.fun’s livestream feature triggered a wave of copycat stunts, with streamers engaging in suicide threats, animal abuse and other shocking acts to pump their tokens.

The company eventually shut down the feature and later relaunched a toned-down version of the livestream service.

But while Yu’s case is certainly unique, it’s not the only time that crypto has blurred the line between real death, faked death and something in between. From missing founders to sealed caskets, the industry has a long history of exits that left behind more questions than closure.

Here are five unsettling cases — real, staged or unresolved — that continue to haunt the crypto world.

A suspected Chinese programmer burning 500 Ether (ETH) and donating 1,950 ETH to various groups like WikiLeaks and the Ethereum Foundation. The total value of the donation at the time of writing is $6,800,000.

The programmer, who went by the username "Hu Lezhi," also left messages onchain in February 2025.

The messages, which were written in broken English and included a series of typos, read like sci-fi horror. Hu claimed he’d been a mind-control test subject since childhood and warned of a future where humans were nothing more than "puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine."

"I am a volunteer for an experiment by WizardQuant (Kuande Investment) hedge fund since I was born. They put a chip in my brain to control my mind and thoughts," one message read.

"I have no time to explain. They are using brain-computer weapons to control people and the market. They are the ones behind the crypto winter and the war in Ukraine."

In one of his last messages, Hu said they would "leave the world" if they reached the final stage of becoming a "complete slave to the, digital machine." Some translated the series of messages as onchain suicide notes.

To date, they haven't re-emerged. And unlike Yu, Hu's wallet hasn't moved since February 2025.

On October 28, 2022, DeFi developer Nikolai Mushegian posted a chilling message on X: "CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring... they are going to torture me to death."

By the next morning, he was found face-down in the surf near his beach house in Puerto Rico.

Mushegian wasn't some random crypto kid. He was an early developer at MakerDAO and a key architect of the stablecoin ecosystem.

He was also increasingly paranoid — or, depending on who you ask, increasingly aware. Critics dismissed the X post as a mental health crisis, but others weren't so quick to look away.

The timing of his death sparked a wave of theories: assassination, targeted silencing or even MKUltra-style mind control.

Officially, it was ruled an accidental drowning.

In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, the 30-year-old founder of Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, reportedly died in India from Crohn's disease.

But there was one massive problem: he was the only person with access to CAD 190 million (about $1.3 billion at today's rates) in crypto.

As news of his death spread, so did the questions. There was no public autopsy, his death certificate had his name spelled wrong (Cottan instead of Cotten), the casket was sealed, and a growing army of investors