On Saturday morning, the body of prominent crypto developer Nikolai Mushegian was found dead, floating in the water just off the coast of Puerto Rico.
According to the local news report from El Nuevo Dia, 29-year-old Mushegian died after he was dragged out to sea by the strong currents at Condado beach. Condado beach has a reputation for being an incredibly dangerous beach for swimmers, claiming the lives of eight people in 2021 alone.
Mushegian was well known in crypto circles for his role as a co-founder of the crypto lending platform MakerDAO (MAKR) and the stablecoin DAI.
While official reports claim that Mushegian drowned, major personalities in the crypto space believe something far more sinister was at work, namely that the he was actually murdered by agents from the CIA and Mossad — the national intelligence agency of Israel.
Much of the suspicion around Mushegian’s death comes from an incredibly strange Tweet that the crypto developer posted just hours before he died.
In it, Mushegian claimed that the CIA, Mossad and the “pedo elite” were running a “sex trafficking blackmail ring” out of Puerto Rico and planned to “torture him to death”. He added that he would eventually be framed with evidence from his laptop, and that his ex girlfriend was a spy.
In August, Mushegian criticised the CIA for being “probably the cheapest [people] money can buy” suggesting that the agency’s resources were available for sale to the highest bidder.
Then, even more suspiciously on September 5, he predicted that the number one most likely cause of death for himself would be being “suicided by the CIA”.
Did the CIA really “suicide” Nikolai Mushegian?
While Mushegian’s foreshadowing tweets have led to various rumours flying across Crypto Twitter and online messaging forum Reddit, the overwhelming response from the community was one of shock and sadness.
Yesterday, MakerDAO founder Rune Christiansen tweeted out his condolences, saying that the organisation “would have been toast without him”.
Following Christiansen, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson shared his sympathies, remembering the young developer as an “extremely bright man” who commanded a deep understanding of technology.
Without leaning too heavily on pure conspiracy, the CIA do have a legitimate track record of getting up to some fairly menacing things in the past, with documents released in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act revealing that the CIA has been behind numerous covert and inhumane operations.
These include the likes of the “mind control program” MK Ultra, funding right wing dictator Augustus Pinochet’s regime in Chile as well as using fake plane hijacking attacks to frame enemy nations.
Ultimately, we won’t know more until local authorities conduct further investigation. It’s also worth noting that a number of key figures in crypto circles often have a fundamental distrust of the government and major institutions, which is the core ethos for some behind the movement. This means that there can often be a heavy conspiratorial lean towards certain theories in cryptoland.
With that being said, the circumstances around Mushegian’s death warrant a credible amount of suspicion. It will be extremely interesting to watch what information is revealed as investigators begin looking into the events prior to the developer’s unfortunate passing.
