We chose two movies for you to watch on the upcoming weekend: Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King; Dead Man’s Switch: A Crypto Mystery.
On March 30, 2022, Netflix released “Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King,” a true-crime documentary that takes viewers back several years and reveals the story of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, QuadrigaCX, and the death of its founder Gerald Cotten (Gerry).
This documentary is a first-person account of a number of crypto investors who find out one day that the CEO of the exchange where they invested their funds in the form of cryptocurrency has died at the age of 30. The death of crypto multimillionaire Gerry Cotten seems suspicious to a group of investors because, with his death, $250 million are also gone.
Soon after his death, it was announced that the turnovers of the exchange were stored in the laptop of the deceased founder, and only he had passwords to access it.
Shared financial turmoil unites investors who doubt whether the director is really dead and begin their own investigation. During the course of the movie, there are several theories about what happened to their money, but the leading approach is that Jerry faked his death and stole their money.
The piece is fast-paced, reminding viewers of essential things like how some financial fraud schemes can work, explaining how cryptocurrencies work, and highlighting a key feature of blockchain: transparency.
If you are interested in cryptocurrencies as well as real-life crime documentaries, you can expect a catchy detective story during which you will make your own guesses about the subject and sympathize with the lives behind the story.
As is usually the case after the last seconds of true crime documentaries, people do their own little Internet research and look for more details about the story, thus, let us note that this was not the first reference to this story in filmography. In December 2021, Dead Man’s Switch: A Crypto Mystery, another documentary, was released about Gerald’s mysterious death, affecting more than 110,000 investors. This earlier movie fleshes out the story, focusing primarily on journalists investigating the QuadrigaCX case.
Despite the absurdity of this story, it should not impact people’s trust in cryptocurrencies but teach valuable lessons about security and safety. Unfortunately, parallel with Crypto’s rising popularity, nowadays, scammers multiply their efforts to take advantage of traders’ curiosity and enthusiasm.
