San Francisco crypto founder faked his own death

Jeffy Yu was days away from his 23rd birthday when he appeared to take his own life Sunday in a livestream video. A flattering obituary appeared, calling the aspiring crypto mogul “a visionary artist, technologist, and cultural force” and “a tech prodigy from an early age.” A memecoin in Yu’s honor went up for sale.

But in the days that followed, online sleuths raised doubts about the video’s authenticity. The obituary disappeared. Whatever deceptive game was being played came to an indisputable end when The Standard found Yu on Wednesday, holed up at his parents’ Crocker-Amazon home.

Standing outside the two-story house, the supposedly gifted tech developer was agitated and shocked that he had been found after some routine internet searches.

“I’ve been doxxed. I’ve been harassed. If you can find me, other people can find me,” he said. “Now I have to move my parents out of here this week.”

Yu is the developer of Zerebro, an obscure cryptocurrency token with a market capitalization of $44 million. (Bitcoin, by comparison, has a market cap of $2 trillion.) Zerebro was little known until Yu appeared to shoot himself during a livestream on pump.fun, a cryptocurrency platform. 

That full video is no longer available, but snippets are circulating. His obituary, which called him a “Martyr of Imagination and Creativity,” is no longer on Legacy.com.