Astonishing insight into one of the biggest cash scams in history
They called it the Bitcoin Killer. OneCoin promised to be the people’s cryptocurrency: it would change the world, and make its global army of small investors lifechanging sums. It was, of course, nothing but smoke and mirrors. When the reckoning came, this tale of greed and folly, turbocharged by the latest tech, left countless ordinary lives in ruins. The tragic account of how it happened is an astonishing read, plunging you into a toxic world of Insta-wealth, betrayal and ruthless ambition.
The Missing Cryptoqueen follows the OneCoin scandal from its hopeful origins to its tawdry end. Jamie Bartlett’s book is based on a BBC podcast which became a runaway success, with millions of downloads. Full of excellent, in-depth reporting, the story has now been expanded and updated for print.
At its centre is the “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova. A high-flying Oxford graduate and McKinsey consultant, Ignatova reinvented herself as “Dr Ruja”, the face of OneCoin and an alleged crypto expert. In private, she styled herself the “Bitch of Wall Street”, and when the chips were down she betrayed even her own brother.
Just as, for a brief period, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos seemed like a female Steve Jobs, OneCoin’s Dr Ruja – glamorous head of a buzzing start-up, its top team dominated by women – seemed the Elizabeth Holmes of crypto. Sadly, she and Holmes were most alike in writing verbal cheques their businesses could never cash. And the scale of OneCoin’s deception was out of Holmes’s league.
Ignatova’s fatal flaw, which she shared with her victims and her co-conspirator Sebastian “Flash” Greenwood, was a longing to be rich, whatever the cost. She and Greenwood loved fancy clothes and living the high life, and developed a complex Ponzicum-pyramid scheme that sold that dream on to layer after layer of suckers. She promised them a new kind of blockchain, but it was never built. The victims ended up paying for
Dr Ruja’s life of luxury in exchange for a few worthless “educational” pdfs cribbed from other people’s books.
OneCoin’s investors collectively lost somewhere between three and ten billion euros from 2014 to 2017. More than five times the size of Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos fraud, it is one of the largest scams of all time. It also disproportionately ruined people who could least afford it. Bernie Madoff is still the unbeaten champion of Ponzi schemes, but the $18billion he stole came from 30,000 super-rich individuals or fund managers. OneCoin took the life savings of a million ordinary people across 175 countries. It was able to become so big by combining the hi-tech hopes of cryptocurrency with a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme. OneCoin didn’t just fool isolated individuals, it encouraged them to become advocates and sell the dream of making it big to people further down the pyramid. While MLM schemes for real products can be legitimate, OneCoin was selling nothing but empty promises. Its unwitting dupes bought worthless OneCoin packages – then did their best to sell them on to everyone they loved.
The money came in like a flood. Bitcoin’s soaring price at around the same time helped to convince hundreds of thousands of people that this was their chance to jump on the crypto bandwagon. In Hong Kong, so much cash was being handed over that the company had to rent a flat just to stack it with piles of banknotes.
Once an MLM scheme gains momentum it can grow exponentially. OneCoin grew so fast that it had no hope of keeping up with the promises it was making. At its peak, it was claiming to create €500million out of thin air every 24 hours. By the end, its investors believed they were due to cash out an astonishing €100billion. Dr Ruja, sensing the net tightening, vanished. Bartlett’s attempt to follow her trail makes for a fascinating detective story, and ends with a tantalising near-miss. His ability to track even the smallest digital breadcrumbs will make you think twice before ever posting a photo to social media again.
The Cryptoqueen remains missing. She is wanted by Interpol, to answer charges of money laundering and fraud in Germany. So far, she seems to be one step ahead. Ironically, Dr Ruja may be living a life of luxury with a surgically-altered face in part thanks to the Bitcoin she secured from one of her many complex deals. If so, Bitcoin’s own recent price collapse may limit her next moves. With justice pending,
As the financial pinch tightens, this book is a reminder to keep hold of common sense
you end this account of a very 21stcentury fraud angrily wanting answers. There is no simple moral. OneCoin’s failings don’t reflect on cryptocurrency more widely. Even on paper, Dr Ruja’s non-existent product promised to be everything the blockchain isn’t: centralised, opaque and available in effectively unlimited amounts. Still, as the financial pinch tightens, this book is a reminder to keep hold of common sense. When someone promises that “everybody in this room will become very rich”, they are lying.
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