After 100 Projects Die, Some Mourn, Some Go to AI

On August 7th, around 4:30 AM, a call came in to the police at Asunción's Jade Park luxury residential building.

Upon arrival, the authorities found a man who had fallen from a high floor at the base of the building. The body was naked and covered in a black plastic bag. Inside the 30-story apartment complex, they found an open door and a disheveled interior; no other individuals were found at the scene. The apartments on the 27th and 30th floors related to the deceased were subsequently sealed off for evidence collection. The police have not yet provided any conclusions.

Soon, the identity of the fallen man was revealed to be Harry Chun Tak Yeh, a prominent figure in the crypto community as an investor and project founder, also of Chinese descent with the Chinese name 叶俊德.

The juxtaposition of a luxury residence, the crypto community, a founder, and death quickly hinted at a possible narrative.

Harry Chun Tak Yeh 叶俊德

From "Resurrection" to Zero: A Narrative

Yeh had a personal website listing projects such as Tomb, LIF3, L3 Reserve, L3USD, among others, along with his Quantum Fintech Group. The combined scale of the figures on the page exceeded $20 billion.

His rise to fame began before the projects during a previous crypto cycle.

Yeh once mentioned that he bought Bitcoin around $60 in 2013. Subsequently, he entered the off-exchange Bitcoin and OTC trading market in a partnership role at Binary Financial. By at least 2015, he had been a frequent face in the industry at events like Coin Congress, Money20/20, discussing Bitcoin prices, liquidity, and institutional funds in front of the camera. By 2022, he could even be interviewed by Bloomberg as the founder of Quantum Fintech Group, debating whether the crypto market was heading into a "super cycle."

He did not step into the spotlight only after Tomb gained traction. Tomb provided him with a grander stage.

Tomb initially ran on Fantom, with a core narrative around an algorithmic token pegged to FTM: when the price was above the peg, the system expanded; when the price fell below the peg, contraction and yield rebase awaited.

At its peak, Tomb's protocol held over $1.6 billion.

By August 10, 2026, just two days after the Yeh suicide case was exposed, this figure was less than $30,000, almost down to zero.

Other projects have also left behind traces of collapse. Both LIF3 and L3USD are basically at zero. After all, even the networks they run on, like Fantom, are on the verge of disappearing, let alone the value of the protocols built on them.

It's also easy to imagine what retail investors who invested in these zero projects might be thinking.

Just do a quick search on Reddit, and you'll find posts like "Is TOMB finance dead?" and "Is the TOMB/FTM LP Dead now?" Some have written about putting around $1,200 into the TOMB/FTM liquidity pool, only to see their position shrink significantly after the anchor broke; others have mentioned that their initial investment of around $2,000 is almost gone.

Death List in a Bear Market

Death always seems to coincide with a bear market. The signals were extremely clear during the 2022 bear market following the collapse of FTX.

There is still no evidence to suggest foul play in these events, but the absence of evidence of murder makes it even more suspicious.

A bear market can make people lose their shared framework of explanation. When prices fall, an undisclosed autopsy report, an ongoing helicopter investigation, or a pre-mortem tweet of fear are all more likely to be magnified into part of an unsolved case.

Yeh Junde is no exception.

100 Projects Dead

This is an unprecedented bear market, with all funds and people exiting. No bear market in the cryptocurrency industry can compare to the carnage of 2026. It has been estimated that over 100 crypto projects have shut down, gone bankrupt, or ceased operations permanently, spanning exchanges, wallets, lending protocols, NFT markets, and blockchains. The actual situation is definitely more brutal than the number 100.

Money is flowing out. According to PeckShield's data, hacking and fraud losses amounted to around $4.04 billion in 2025, with DeFi alone being hacked for about $972 million in the first half of 2026.

People are also leaving. Some did not wait for project liquidation. Sam Blackshear, the creator of the Move language and co-founder of Mysten Labs, recently announced his move to Anthropic to participate in defensive security research; Alex Atallah, co-founder of OpenSea, went on to found OpenRouter, and Dawn Song, founder of Oasis Labs, joined Meta's AI team. As of March 2026, weekly code commits in the crypto space have decreased by about 75% compared to early 2025, and active blockchain developers have decreased by 56%.

Another person has passed away. If we were to choose a keyword for the cryptocurrency industry in 2026, “death” would certainly be the choice of the majority.

The door on the 30th floor in Asunción, Paraguay is still open, with police coming in and out, trying to find any clues.

But for those who have stayed in the crypto space, they are reopening the door to the world of crypto.