Trust is a valuable asset when it comes to investments and especially in the world of crypto
DISCLAIMER: This post contains spoilers on the Netflix documentary "Trust no one: The Hunt for the Crypto King. While I believe it is worth watching even if you know details about the story, stop reading if you prefer to watch the documentary first.
Yesterday I watched the Netflix documentary Trust no one: The Hunt for the Crypto King after reading about it on this post on LeoFinance. It's a crazy story, and if I didn't know it was a real one, I would definitely believe this thing was a mockumentary.
The documentary is about a case involving QuadrigaCX, one of the biggest Canadian crypto exchanges, that was at the center of a millionaire crypto scam.
I won't delve into the details of the story, but, basically, what happened was that a guy called Gerald Cotten founded QuadrigaCX during the Bitcoin boom, and the company became the largest crypto exchange in Canada. Some people started getting suspicious when they could not withdraw their money from the platform. Things got even weirder in January 2019 when the company announced that Cotten died unexpectedly and that he was the sole owner of the keys to the wallet that held all the crypto that the company held, meaning that all the assets were pretty much inaccessible by anyone.
The documentary follows journalists, authorities, crypto entrepreneurs and QuadrigaCX's clients during the investigation that eventually uncovered that Cotten had been involved in scams for many years and the crypto company was his latest con. The details of the story are uncanny, though, and that's why I believe everyone should watch the documentary, even if they already know about the plot.
The value of trust
One important thing is that "Trust no one" is not a documentary about crypto, and crypto was not the cause or the enabler of the scam. It's actually quite the opposite, as the documentary reveals. The fact that the transactions that took place during the fraud were all made on the blockchain was one of the reasons that made it possible for the authorities to understand what was going on since those transactions could easily be verified by anyone with a basic understanding of how blockchain works.
The documentary is about trust. The thing that made it possible for Cotten to steal nearly 200 million dollars was trust. He only used crypto because scammers follow the money, and there is where the money was (and still is).
According to many accounts, Cotten was a very likeable guy. His shy, geeky way and his quick smile were captivating, and the fact that he was a reserved person and a strong cryptocurrency evangelist made him adored by the Canadian crypto community, which, back then, mainly consisted of people that saw a lot of themselves in Cotten.
He didn't have a track record of projects in crypto, and he wasn't a celebrity, but he could get people to trust him, and that was all it took for them to throw their money (sometimes all of their money) in his exchange.
Trust is an invaluable asset that can take many years to build, and it's also one of the reasons I decided to make LEO and other LeoFinance related projects my number priority for the time being.
Why do people trust LeoFinance?
While trust is something very personal, and I can only speak for myself, I have a pretty good idea of why people, in general, tend to trust LeoFinance and why they get involved in the many projects that its team created over time.
Khal, the founder of LeoFinance is a public person, and you can see him at least once on most weeks during the LeoFinance Weekly AMA. I'm not saying that anonymous people cannot be trusted. Just look at Satoshi Nakamoto, for example. No one knows who is behind the name, and yet most, if not all, of the people involved in crypto trust the protocol he designed many years ago.
So, no, being a public person is not enough to earn people's trust, but it can help a lot, especially when dealing with the so-called normies. They need to have a face attached to the project because they trust in people, not in protocols.
However, being a public person should not be the single factor that determines whether people should trust a project or not, as the situation with QuadrigaCX and Gerald Cotten has taught us. There is another thing that can be even more important in the process of building trust, which is reputation, and this is where I think LeoFinance shines.
The LeoFinance brand has been around for many years, and they have a track record of many projects under their belts. If you ever used LeoDex, HiveStats or made a post on LeoFinance, to name a few, you are a witness of their commitment to the people that believe in them.
More recently, LeoFinance entered the world of DeFi and, if you think crypto is a "dangerous" world, you should know that DeFi is a particular niche where risks are taken to the next level.
Before the launch of CubFinance, LeoFinance's first endeavour in DeFi, I had never heard of that term before, and the only reason I decided to give it a try was that I trusted the team that built it. The exact same thing happened when they launched PolyCub a few weeks ago.
In the many years that LeoFinance was around and even more so in the last year after a lot of money was transferred to CubFinance and PolyCub, Khal had many opportunities to do what is often referred to as a rug pull and run away with literally a few million dollars, and yet, here we are.
Of course, you can disagree with the way some of the projects were made or debate whether they are successful or not but, at least for now, you can't cast any shred of doubt on the team's reputation and their commitment to LeoFinance and Hive, and that's why I keep believing and investing my assets and my time on everything they create.
Final thoughts
Trust is an asset. It is essential in every aspect of human interaction, and the world of cryptocurrency is no exception.
As more money flows from the legacy system to crypto, it's natural that scammers and con artists of all sorts will also move their devious schemes to this universe. Therefore trust and reputation will become even more important to differentiate legitimate projects from scams.
LeoFinance proved to me, time and time again, that it's worthy of my trust, and so I'll keep following them and getting involved in their projects.