A Publicized Death: The Money and Humanity Behind Jeffy's Faked Death

Jessy, Golden Finance

The crypto meme has a new narrative: the death track.

On May 6th, a death announcement of Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu was released, which instantly attracted public attention and received extensive coverage from cryptocurrency media.

The release of this obituary seems to confirm the authenticity of Jeffy's live-streamed suicide with a gun on Pump.fun on May 4.

The will he issued on Mirror was also made public after a 72-hour countdown. It mentioned the token $LLJEFFY, referring to it as his last piece of art.

There has been a lot of speculation surrounding the $LLJEFFY token, along with various discussions in the community about whether Jeffy is actually dead or not. As evidence of Jeffy's actual death being fake has gradually emerged, the price of the $LLJEFFY token has taken a roller coaster ride along with the spread of various news. The market capitalization of the $LLJEFFY token has also fallen from a peak of over 30 million dollars to 4 million dollars as of the time of writing.

Even after Jeffy's associated account "died", it continued to operate. The fluctuations of the $LLJEFFY token further confirm the iron law of attention economy. Looking back at this "fake death" farce, one can see more traces of marketing and planning involved. In the crypto world, what is considered a "death" seems to be merely a gimmick that can be hyped.

A death that was announced in advance

The event first started on May 4th, born in 2002, entered Stanford at 15, became an engineer at 19, and at 21, the "genius" Jeffy who created Zerebro is at Pump.fun.

He went live with his "suicide" - he held a gun to his jaw, and after a shot, the video screen went black.

It is not uncommon to see various eye-catching live broadcasts on Pump.fun, and initially, Jeffy's suicide live stream did not spark much discussion.

On May 6th, the obituary website Legacy published an obituary for Jeffy. Subsequently, various cryptocurrency media also reported on this obituary. The token $LLJEFFY mentioned in his will also experienced its first wave of increase.

According to Bubblemaps' analysis, the $LLJEFFY token was launched before Jeffy went live on Pump.fun, and after the launch, the $LLJEFFY dev wallet and several associated addresses have been trading and burning tokens.

However, whether it is true death has always been a question within the community. Someone discovered that the account still had activity on Github, and there were also operations from an address suspected to belong to Jeffy after the death. Even the website that published the obituary was a site where you could post information just by paying (the obituary has now been deleted from that site).

However, the Jeffy death incident ultimately took a turn. On the evening of May 6th at 8 PM, X user @Irenezhao_ posted that they asked an insider, who stated that Jeffy was faking his death. It was right after this news was released that the $LLJEFFY token saw a plummet from its peak, dropping over 80%.

On May 7th, Jeffy's faked death began to be confirmed by more evidence, as Wonderland founder Daniele disclosed a detailed letter sent by Jeffy Yu to early investors.

In the letter, Jeffy Yu said that he created and disseminated a video of himself shooting himself as the only way to escape the ongoing harassment, blackmail and threats. Previously, he was harassed and defrauded by his ex-partner, blackmailed by his intimate partner, and his personal information was exposed due to an online hate crime, and his personal safety was threatened.

Choosing to fake a death instead of exiting the project is because they believe that publicly exiting a crypto project would provoke more scrutiny, and the project's coin price would also suffer a decline.

In the future, he will focus on anonymous music creation and will deactivate social accounts. Prior to these actions, he had found out that "suspended animation" was not illegal and that everything was fine with his state.

Similarly, according to the message released by Lookonchain on May 7 on X, their monitoring showed that on the morning of May 6, a wallet possibly related to Jeffy Yu sold 35.55 million $ZEREBRO for 8,572 $SOL (1.27 million USD). Then, 7,100 $SOL (1.06 million USD) was transferred to the $LLJEFFY development wallet "G5sjgj".

"When you trade, you forget the humanity behind the numbers"

Apart from the fact that Jeffy’s death hoax has basically been confirmed, the operation of the project behind the $LLJEFFY token has not stopped. The burning of $LLJEFFY has not ceased, and although the community has confirmed Jeffy to be a death hoax, the $LLJEFFY token has experienced a drop of around 90% from its peak, the hype is still present. Traders have not stopped trading the $LLJEFFY token. Traders even view the destruction of tokens by the $LLJEFFY dev as an important indicator for buying the dip. There are even comments circulating in the community like "Regardless of whether he is dead or alive, a project that is still burning tokens is a good project."

"Money" does not care whether Jeffy is really dead; "money" cares about where the hotspots are and where the wealth effect is. This incident also bears a strong trace of marketing script planning. The final interpretation of the story, however, is a dance between a large number of retail investors and project parties.

Looking back at the fermentation of the "fake death" incident, we find that the progress of the event is closely linked. First, there was infighting within the Zerebro team, then Jeffy, unable to bear the pressure, went live on Pump.fun to "commit suicide," with a mirror article announcing the birth of the $LLJEFFY token being released in a timely manner, although this token had already been deployed before his live broadcast. At the same time as the “will” he released, a death "obituary" also entered the public eye, and it was this widely circulated "obituary" that drew extensive public attention to Jeffy's death and the token mentioned in the "will."

Then the $LLJEFFY dev really did not sell a single coin as written in Jeffy's article, and has been continuously burning tokens. It also seems that Jeffy's account has not stopped trading, which further confirms that this appears to be a carefully planned marketing campaign.

In this meticulously planned scheme, winners, like all Meme projects, are a minority. There are quite a few whales at a loss. On the afternoon of May 6, $LLJEFFY experienced a plunge after a significant surge due to @Irenezhao_’s remarks, and the funds attracted during this surge were all trapped at the peak.

Although the project team is still continuously buying and burning, the presence of so many trapped positions makes it very unlikely for the token to reach a new high.

This meticulously planned "fake death" scheme, the rise and fall of its tokens, is inherently a resonance of short-term emotions and the manipulation of major players.

In Jeffy's will, he repeatedly mentions "I hate money", and the story of the $LLJEFFY token seems like a satire of his so-called "will". Moreover, the trading activities of an address suspected to belong to him after his "death" also seem to mock "I hate money".

Jeffy hates that money hasn't brought him happiness and believes that meaning is greater than money. However, when faced with a person's "passing", it is merely a matter of mourning online while continuously FOMOing and buying and selling without pause.

From the perspective of performance art, it is the fomo behavior of the $LLJEFFY project team and retail investors that collectively creates this artwork in the cryptocurrency space. As Jeffy said, "This artwork is about humanity," and "When you trade, you forget the humanity behind the numbers."