Trust No One | The hunt for the crypto king

People get scammed in crypto. We all know this and maybe we all have been there already. Don't put your money on an exchange, do your own research. Check where you send you funds to. Do test withdrawals.

All of these errors were made by people back in the day with the Quadriga scandals. But what they didn't know is that they never stood a chance trying to get their funds back when the CEO Gerrie Cotton suddenly died and no one had the keys to the wallets?

Netflix made a sweet documentary out of this, and again these are things everyone should watch when transferring large sums.

Be careful reading on because there will be some spoilers in here, if you are interested in watching the docu

It starts out with a couple of users telling their story on how they got duped with sending funds. Crypto market in 2017 was booming until it wasn't anymore and all of a sudden there was debt. Selling a house to get rid of the debt and using an exchange to send funds over because banks are expensive for moving money abroad. This is something we would use exchanges for as well, not for those amounts, but sending money abroad just is expensive and it takes like forever. So I get it. The timing was just really bad.

And you know what happens is everyone tries to withdraw their funds all at the same time. The question is if there is enough reserve to back it all. If we all run to the bank tomorrow to get piles of cash, there is no way it can all be paid. I wonder how much these exchanges have to back it...

Back to the CEO. After the big 2017 crashes this dude is going more and more off the radar until suddenly he 'dies in India while building a childrens orphanage'. The date of his date was released a month after while is long and also his will was changed two weeks before.

These are just a lot of alarming things and although talking to the doctor he treated the guy in the hospital makes it more likely that the dude did indeed die, the circumstances around this million dollar figure are just weird.

Later on it turns out the dude was a con-man indeed and the cold wallet of the exchange was nearly empty. So yeah, when you find that out...that means there is no way you are going to get your money back and for the users...that just really sucks.

The good thing about these kinds of Netflix documentaries is that they are educative for the people who have just gotten into crypto and think everything is happy joy joy and we all make a buck here and there. But literally around every corner there is someone trying to scam you as well, and you have to be sharper than the edge of a knife to dodge that.

Use MFA, stop clicking links (like ever...just stop), make test withdrawals on Discord. Think about what happens if your government freezes you access to somewhere all of a sudden. Use your brain and assume there is someone lurking to take your funds.

Crypto is beautiful but scary at the same time.