Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is the latest Netflix investigative documentary, released on March 30, 2022. The documentary is produced by Minnow Films & directed by Luke Sewell. This true-crime British documentary has a runtime of about 1 hour 30 minutes. The audio is available in Hindi with the original English audio & subtitles.
-Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
The Hunt for the Crypto King: How It All Started?
The documentary, Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King, starts with a Squid Game-esque mask-wearing man talking in a distorted voice about Gerry. Gerald Cotten aka Gerry is the founder of QuadrigaCX, a company that deals with the transactional exchange of cryptocurrency. It was founded in 2013 & gained popularity over time, till it became one of the largest of its kind in Canada. Everything seemed to be going great for everyone involved until 2018 when it all crumbled down to nothing. The untimely death of its CEO, Gerald Cotten led QuadrigaCX to cease all operations & file for bankruptcy in February 2019. But what really went down?
Is Greed Truly a Matter of Life and Death?
Gerry is described as a friendly, positive and upbeat nerdy guy who doesn’t come off as a sophisticated criminal mastermind. But then what changed was that he was accused of this massive investment scam of millions of Canadian dollars. His shocking demise left people wondering if he orchestrated his fake death or was murdered by his own wife or maybe gang mobsters.
The strangeness of the 24-year-old Gerry’s death led his victims & people online to pick up the pieces to sew an online investigation. In 2018, Bitcoin prices started to decline and the crypto market ultimately crashed. This led to people panickily withdrawing their money from QuadrigaCX, but they were met with process failure. Furious investors banded together in hopes of getting their money back by descending into a witch hunt online to find the “Crypto King”.
Online forums were abuzz with people trying to find anything about Gerald Cotten. They were going after his peers, wife, ex founders etc… just to get a bit of information & confirmation if Gerry’s alive. He was found dead in India of Crohn’s disease but people were not convinced. Journalists’ flocked to India to investigate further but met with the same answer. Some even claimed that there was nobody in the casket. I guess when you are in deep water, imagining even a piece of stalk can help you keep afloat.
The main reason for despair is that without Gerry nobody has the access to $190 million in holdings, which could be locked away somewhere on this planet. In cases where money is involved, it is fair to say that it really becomes a matter of life and death. Conspiracy theories will only fuel your opinion in desperate times and will stop at nothing. Of course, people who have lost all their life savings in this crypto heist will think everything is fake until they get their money back if it ever happens.
Final Thoughts: Dead or Scam
Netflix documentary, Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is not your answer to if Gerry is alive. It simply delves into details of what really went down after his death. It shows us the point of view of people who became victims of this massive investment fraud. The documentary is dramatised to show what the real-time events could have looked like with its online text & social media posts style of visual storytelling.
The lights & colour of the documentary give it a cinematic feel to your typical flat light documentaries. It all comes down to if you can trust the websites when dealing with all sorts of things online. After all, it’s just a bunch of HTML pages bundled together, but behind that are real people who we will never know.
Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is streaming on Netflix.
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