Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King

WOW this was frustrating. So many questions and ended so abruptly. I think they prob should have done this in another five years time and see what else comes out. Leaves you with an empty feeling.

The documentary is about an understandably disgruntled group of duped investors, who started an "online investigation" on the untimely demise of Cotten, the founder of Quadriga, a cryptocurrency scam scheme. Cotten died during a trip to India with his mysterious wife Jen. But the documentary doesn't clarify much about Cotten or whatever happened to the $150.000 million he allegedly embezzled.

Quadriga, the shiny Canadian cryptocurrency company created by Cotten attracted young, nerdy, greedy guys who wanted to be millionaires before the age of 30 and invested all their money in an online company about which they knew next to nothing, just to show to the world how smart they were... and they ended with nothing because Cotten was smarter than them.

Reading the other reviews it seems like what struck most the audience was the misfortunate guy who invested all his money ($400.000) to save the 2% a bank would have charged him for a withdrawal. Not only that, but this guy's desperate move was fuelled by the fact that he took a loan for $85.000 to invest in cryptocurrency, and when the value started to drop, he had to withdraw what he could and even sell his house to pay his debt and start over... with exactly nothing, because he invested in Gerry Cotten's Ponzi scheme, AKA QuadrigaCX.

All this sounds so unreal because taking place in the online universe but having no money left is a real enough situation and while Cotten owned some $11 million in tangible assets, his investors lost everything.

Jen was not available to be interviewed, so the big mystery lies with her: did she kill Cotten? Did she help him to disappear? Was she duped like the investors? The investigation should have been a tad more accurate but perhaps the sense of irreality proves the intangibility of this new, albeit still cruel world some people live in.

Why should anyone trust something that at best is only real in some sort of cyberspace locker? Most of us have seen a bank vault at least from the outside. It is an imposing thing and it isn't just for show. It is due to extreme measures being taken to protect currency and physical things of value In this it seems utterly stupid to trust something that isn't physical that who knows who might have access to. Maybe I am behind the technological curve, but the whole idea of crypto-currency seems like it is the worst idea to build one's financial life around.

This is a fascinating story of greed and crime based on what on the surface seems like a very unlikely criminal named Gerald Cotten. It's a mystery in that no one will likely ever be sure of how Cotten lost his investors monies. It's also somewhat unclear if Cotten did, in fact, die in India. What is known is that Cotten did engage in a criminal Ponzi scheme to fund his own self. There are other mysteries too such as did his co-founder have a hand in the criminal activity? Did his wife have knowledge as well as complicity in the crime? This doc exposes a lot of the bad stuff yet certainly it lacks some definitive answers. It is a good warning about how crypt-currencies aren't the answer to any kind of better monetary system. See it and come to your own conclusions. Personally after seeing this I can see why the value of these supposed financial instruments is unsafe and best avoided. In a way we should be glad this shot over the bough is a real warning.

Over the next few years this same story will be told again many times, when you allow an international Ponzi scheme to go on for so long and I'm talking about cryptocurrency as a whole, unregulated, this is what happens. There's many exchanges across the world that have popped up and down in no time claiming to be regulated by FCA etc but ultimately until serious regulation is in place, this space will remain the Wild West.

The guy that transferred 400k in one transaction without doing any testing on that exchange needs his head testing.

Good documentary, if your not familiar with the world of crypto watch it, it shouldn't necessarily put you off investing, do your due diligence before you do.

The sister is as transparent as a pane of glass, don't believe a word she says.

For what it's worth, I doubt the death certificate is worth the paper it's written on, certainly not as much as the doctor received for producing it.

This is a solid documentary that provides simple enough information for would be victims of crypto scams. Watch out for the poor ratings given here by so called "experts" that want to trash this documentary in order to maintain the credibility of a continuous "decentralised" crypto business scam fuelled by greed.

I am a techie with 30 + years in the industry and I can assure you that the chances you will be scammed in the crypto world is very, very high.

Btw, are you a believer that the world will have a decentralised financial economy? Keep dreaming. The bits and coins of the darknet will continue to rejoice at your naïveté.