“On 9th December 2018 the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga CX dies. Gerald Cotten personally held the passwords to customers’ digital wallets, thereby rendering $190 million lost or missing. Speculation continues about the truth behind his sudden death in India.”

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Death is a rare phenomenon in the cryptocurrency world, although exit scams are not. Here, the corporeal event of bodily death suddenly clashed with – and superseded – the seeming immateriality (on the first glance) of the crypto world. The crypto-realm seem to function on a quasi-religious premise of belief in digital money – money that only exists when enough people assert and legitimates its realness via the blockchain. 

This work looks at crypto heavens and crypto havens as places where “deceased” CEOs go. Gerald Cotten’s remarkable ability to be both alive and dead in the mind of the redditors transforms him into a Schrödinger’s quantum phenomenon. Leaving a space for speculation on whether Cotten can be found in the cloud of afterlife or in a safe haven with a new identity mixed in between digital nomads, whose life in the video consists of aimlessly filling their time with self care between crypto price jumps.