We had Christine Lagarde the chief of the European Central Bank (ECB) saying that she does not like seeing a new period of “free banking” due to cryptocurrencies and that CBDC are needed to maintain the role of central banks while she attended an online panel hosted by the Bank of France alongside the Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell last September. While referring to historical examples where the Central Bank was not there she continued to reaffirm the point that it was this that precipitated in crisis after crisis adding that “We stand for the bankers”.
Then we had The Economist predicting the downfall of crypto.
Lo and behold we have the sudden deaths of three notable crypto luminaries within a few weeks of one another! These are Nikolai Mushegian 29 Tiantian Kullander 30 and Vyacheslav Taran 53.[1]
The death of Russian businessman and tycoon Vyacheslav Taran in a mysterious helicopter crash in Monaco on November 29 is the most recent fatality in a string of unsolved tragedies making him the third bitcoin entrepreneur to die unexpectedly in recent months. After taking off from Lausanne Switzerland his helicopter crashed near Villefranche-sur-Mer France killing Taran 53 and the 35-year-old French pilot who flew with him.
Taran is a co-founder of the profitable and volatile trading and investing platforms Libertex and Forex Club. Forex Club was accused of investor fraud for the first time in 2018. Despite the fact that Taran’s professional success was marred by a financial scandal social media users argued that his death was not a mere coincidence.
In fact it appears that this crash occurred in good weather and shortly after another passenger reported a last-minute cancellation of the flight raising concerns about possible foul play. According to the deputy prosecutor from Nice who visited the scene a third party’s involvement cannot be ruled out due to these factors.
The Daily Mail [2]has described him as a billionaire crypto entrepreneur with possible ties to the “Russian Foreign Intelligence Service ” as claimed by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN without providing any documentation.
Tiantian Kullander a 30-year-old co-founder of Amber Group Singapore’s trading platform for virtual currencies who was recently valued at $3 billion was found dead in his sleep on November 23 according to the firm.
He co-founded Amber in 2017 with a group of financial industry insiders including ex-Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees and was a key player in the company’s explosive growth which included raising an additional $100 million in capital.
Amber was transformed by Kullander into a multibillion-dollar financial unicorn. He was also a member of the Fanatic board of directors an e-sports organization. The only thing that could be established was that Kullander died while sleeping; no further information was provided.
Nikolai Mushegian the co-founder of MakerDAO a crypto lending network was also discovered dead in a lake in Puerto Rico on 28th October whereby his body was found floating off a beach at 9.am just hours after tweeting at 4:57am that he believed that the Israeli and American security agencies were planning to murder him. Given the young millionaire’s history of mental health issues his family did not suspect foul play according to Brock Pierce a close friend.
Despite this a few of his friends and co-workers have accepted unproven claims that his death was unusual. As a result of the news of Mushegian’s death his final tweet and other depressing posts about battling “bad people ” questions are being raised about his death.
People are thus now still perplexed and wondering what all of this means for the crypto industry which is notoriously volatile. Having three sudden deaths of three notable crypto luminaries who have died within a few weeks of one another at a time when the downfall of crypto is being predicted so that digital money is ushered in does not make it a pure coincidence no?
[1]https://crypto.ro/en/news/death-in-crypto-three-notable-crypto-ceos-died-abruptly-within-a-short-period-in-2022/
[2]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11480711/Russian-billionaire-53-killed-helicopter-crash-near-Monaco-latest-crypto-mystery-death.html