Trust No One: The Hunt For The Crypto King is a newly released Netflix documentary film that tells the story of the rise and a collapse of the Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX. The film was released in many regions outside of US about a month ago, but just recently became available to stream on Netflix in the US. Like me, you may have never heard about QuadrigaCX, and never knew about its founder Gerald Cotten. But we have heard many other stories how centralized crypto exchanges failed their users and people ended up losing a lot of their money and cryptos.
This documentary explores how people lost they hard earned assets by trusting QuadrigaCX and its CEO Gerald Cotten. Young crypto entrepreneur, Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly in 2018 and this lead QuadrigaCX go bankrupt and unable to return its users their assets. Gerry is believed to be the only person with access to private keys and with his death nobody can access these funds anymore. At least that's who it appears to be. However, due to the lack of clarity around the circumstances of Gerry's death, how it was announced, and many investors losing a lot of their money many remain suspicious of the stories they are told.
Investors come together on platforms like telegram and reddit to make sense of this situation and find out more, and most importantly figure out if they somehow can their money back. They quickly start suspecting that Gerry actually didn't die but rather this was an exit scam that defrauded QuadrigaCX users for more than $200 million dollars. Various interested parties start their investigations to find out the truth. As they more information is revealed, things keep looking even worse than what was believed to be before.
The documentary tells the story of things that has happened, yet it seems so not real. There are so many twists. Either due to the superb filmmaking skills or just because events unfolded in such a unique manner, often it felt like watching a work of fiction. This is a very sad story or a collection of sad stories. It is also a story that has an educational value. Crypto history is full of positive stories like the innovative idea and technology Satoshi gave to the world for free, like meaningful networks like Hive build to offer better alternatives, like the success of Ethereum network, etc. But there are also stories like scamming people, ponzi schemes, rugpulls, exit scams, exchange hacks, hostile takeovers, etc.
The most powerful message this film shares is Trust No One in crypto world, especially when it comes to individual influencer figures and centralized exchanges whose goals often are not aligned with the interest of users they claim to provide service to. The film reveals the strangest and paradoxical phenomenon in crypto. That is while crypto technologies offer property rights without a need for a middleman, many choose to put their trust and assets into centralized exchanges. I personally do not complete agree with a philosophy of "trust no one". Life without trust is gloomy. I prefer, trust but verify. But that is in general terms. When it comes to truly powerful use case of the blockchain technologies is removing trust from the equitation altogether. Hence, we call them trustless systems.
The film is also a story of greed. There were many who lost money in QuadrigaCX and all of their stories are interesting. The one I felt really bad about is the story of Tong Zou, a software engineer from San Francisco. When he sees some of his friends becoming rich by investing early in bitcoin and crypto, he decides to invest in crypto as well. First problem or a mistake he makes is he takes out a load for about $80k with high interest rates and buys almost at the top of the bull market. Then bear market starts and he ends up losing about 75% of his initial investment. He gets out of crypto, but the loans still need to be paid and interests keep increasing the loan.
With this bad luck in crypto, Tong decides to sell his apartment in San Francisco to pay off his loans. After he sells and pays off his loans, he has $400k in cash. Looks like his real estate investment performed a lot better than his crypto investments. At least he has $400k, so what he lost $50k in crypto. But then he decides to move his money to Canada. The problem he faces is the 2% fee that he would have to pay to the banks to transfer this much money. It seems to be a lot of money paid for nothing to him. I guess he didn't want to lose any more money.
Because he didn't want to pay 2% in transfer fees, he starts to explore other options. Since he know in crypto transfer fees are low, maybe crypto could help him to move his money without paying 2% fee. That's how he finds out about QuadrigaCX. He buys bitcoin, sends to QuadrigaCX account, sells to Canadian dollars. All looks great so far. Now, when he initiates a withdrawal, things don't go as planned. Withdrawal doesn't go through, and they keep telling him to wait. Days go by, weeks go by, months go by. Nothing. And then the news of Gerald's death is announced. QuadrigaCX collapses. Tong loses all of the 400k. Crypto wasn't nice to Tong at all. He pretty much lost everything he has earned by hard work. Now they are all gone.
Overall, the documentary was worth watching. It explores many different angles of the story, it keeps the viewer wondering about what actually happened with so many twists and possibilities as they tell the story. I think works like this can help educate more people to do more search when investing. At the same time the film may also drive some people away from crypto, especially those who don't understand the bitcoin technology as solution to the flaws in current financial systems yet.
The film answers many questions around the mysteries around QuadrigaCX and Gerald Cotten. But it also leaves many questions unanswered, perhaps because there are simply no answers to them. I believe many will walk away with different conclusions. Have you seen the film yet? What are your thoughts about it? Let me know in the comments.
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Feel really bad for the guy who lost 400k. That is a lot of money. I definitely would not trust a single exchange with that. I'm more Zen on this topic. If the money is not meant to be yours then there's nothing you can do to protect it. People can save their money in their own wallet on their PC only to have their hard drive become corrupt or something like that. I have a friend who owns a small business who had both their hard drive and back up hard drive fail. We just have to go with the flow and live. Thanks for writing an engaging article.
That is a great philosophy to live by. But not that easy to apply, when unfortunate events do happen. Thank you.
I watched it last night!
You see a lot of greed in the crypto world, but also in a lot of realms today.
To be honest, I do not see how Gerald Cotten died from Crohn's.
I have to wonder if that doctor was paid to say what he said.
At this point, no matter what is done people will always see a conspiracy behind it all.
To me it seems like it was more of a suicide by some kind of self poisoning. The reasons I think that are: 1. the money was gone because he lost them trading on other exchanges. 2. his will was signed a couple of weeks before his death.
I agree! He made sure his wife was mostly taken care of.
Being there was no cold wallet to find that sounds logical.
That was his way out, it made it hard on his family and wife but anyway at this point it would have been hard.
Just watched this last night and really enjoyed it. I like the fact of how clearly it showed how wild your mind runs when money is involved and that your first theory very often is never the right one so don't jump to conclusions.
So true. Not jumping into conclusions is a good way to evaluate things.
I felt bad tong ,$400k is not a small amount of money but I guess quadrigaCX is an open exchange,why not withdrawal,he should realize now when it's not your keys is not your coins but experience comes with alot of pain ,I hope people see the good side of cryptocurrency and the benefits to the human race in the documentary not the bad side
These things happen. Even people who own the keys end up losing funds when they lose their keys or devices. It was a big gamble to trust a website with $400k though. He seems to be a talented engineer. I am sure he will recover financially.
I haven't watched the film yet but plan to. I listened to two podcasts about the story and both were very good. I imagine that they are similar to the film. One is called "exit scam" if you happen to like podcast and want to listen.
The Story of Tong is unfortunate but you have to admit that he made a lot of really bad decisions himself. Spend 10 minutes on any discussion board and you get the echo chamber of "crypto is volatile and risky never invest more than you are willing to lose," "never trust exchanges," "never send all of your crypto to an exchange at one time, always start by sending a little bit at first," ...etc and so on. Its very unfortunate but it also sounds a lot like greed got the best of him to me, right from taking out a loan in the begining and then later trying to avoid fees in the end.
You are right, greed is one of our biggest enemies when it comes to money. At least this can serve as a lesson for the rest of us.
I ended up watching it last night. It was quite good even having know the story already. He admitted that it was greed that fuelled his bad decisions so at least he is aware of that. At one point he said that no one wants to get rich slowly, which I think is true in a lot of cases for a lot of people, but it's a mentality that is unrealistic for the majority and one which makes people take bigger and bigger risks. Investing ends up being g more akin to just plain gambling. Ultimately he risked 400 thousand dollars of his entire life savings to save about 6 thousand dollars... max...
That decision doesn't really make any sense.
Still sucks that he got burnt like that though. Unfortunately I'm sure there are hundreds of similar crypto and stock stories out there.
Hoping to watch tonight! (I'm told we can catch a glimpse of @wagginston)
Ah nice, thanks for the info. I did see the bitcoin tattoo.
In finance and business field and especially in commerce, people turn to those who have a good reputation and many years of dealings and services. Many currencies are just scam with exploitation of victims capital , so they don't have any intention of building a purposeful project
With spread of successful currency projects, some resort to exploiting this and creating unsuccessful currencies that take advantage of stupidity of individuals. It is a good idea to educate people with live scenes to learn a lesson and be careful.
saw this doc last night and all I was doing was just opening my mouth wide open. I really felt for the Chinese Canadian guy , $400000 was quite a lot to lose .
I think it highlights some of the dangers in the crypto world and I will have to add this movie to my backlog. Of course, we could highlight the good sides but sometimes people need to know that people need to be careful.
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One of them happened in my country. Founder of a crypto exchange, Thodex, fleed the country with $2 billion of about 400k investors in August, 2021. He has not been found yet.
Netflix is full of so many bad documentaries (poorly edited, sensationalized, rubbish sources and heavily biased towards the writers viewpoint). When I saw this advertised yesterday, I immediately assumed the worst and ignored it.
Thanks to your comments, it looks like it might actually be worth a watch so thanks for the heads up!
Yesterday I saw that Netflix documentary during my flight to Munich.
I liked that documentary and I think more people shall see it to be aware of the security that we need with everything, but special with crypto.
Not your keys, Not your coins.
Extensive review, good story. Reminds me of a crypto early days and playing with Criptsy exchange. Lost around 0.2 btc what was small then but today it would be amazing to have it. It was 2014 I guess.
That is really a sad sad story @geekgirl , We see Crypto can be harsh especially if you start taking loans for it.
Thanks for sharing this movie, on my watchlist now.
This is very great it really be educative. Expecting for more thanks for this
In this world , trust no one. Because human being are dynamic in behave talkless of money issues, many of crypto investors are falling victims into the hand of wrong person.
Cool discovery. I never heard of that exchange but will search it out on Netflix to give it a watch.
Oh my. Yea.. trust Noone. (except hive)
I had never heard about this documentary or the company but it sounds like a great story. I guess I just found something to do tonight
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Bitcoin stories always interest me. I like how this documentary shows people the good and dark side of crypto.
Who doesn't enjoy a good mystery, but very well written review :)
little exchange little value.
I mean the avg crypto exit scam i see every week is around 100M$ :D
This is great. It looks like a good documentary !
Thanks for this
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Looks like an interesting movie to watch, which I will do one of these days, so thanks for sharing it.
Loosing money because of poor investment decisions is a norm in crypto and sorry for that...i feel netflix didnt do justice to crypto if felt like they where selling FUD
Circulating Supply: 87,456,250 Total Supply: 100,000,000 Front Max Supply: 90,000,000 Front These data were published on Binance in October, 97% of which were in circulation. Today, it made an upward pump as it coincided with the downtrend breakout. It has retraced back below the trend. The Downtrend is still not broken. If the $0.80 resistance is broken, there is a high probability of new Ath if the day closes on it. In other words, it manifests itself in the form of a cup formation. In the Front coin, which I have given as an example here, sample graphic waves can occur in other coins. People can buy instantly rising and trending coins from the top without examining the charts too much, which poses a great risk for them. It registers par.
Yeah there are LOTS of people that don't even realize the flaws within the actual monetary system. @geekgirl as usual, it is very worthwhile reading your posts. Thanks again and !PIZZA for you.
- EvM