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

At around 4:30 AM on August 7, the alarm at Jade Park, a luxury residential building in Asunción, rang.

Upon arrival, the police 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 building, they found an open door and a messy interior; no other person was present at the scene. Two apartments on the 27th and 30th floors, related to the deceased, were subsequently searched. The police have not drawn any conclusions at the moment.

Soon, the identity of the man who fell from the building was revealed to be Harry Chun Tak Yeh, a crypto investor and project founder, also of Chinese descent with the Chinese name 叶俊德 (Yeh Junde).

Luxury residence, crypto industry, founder, death – these words strung together quickly hint at a possible narrative.

Harry Chun Tak Yeh 叶俊德

From "Resurrection" to Zeroing Out Curve

Yeh Junde had a personal page listing projects such as Tomb, LIF3, L3 Reserve, L3USD, and his Quantum Fintech Group, with a total figure exceeding $20 billion.

His rise to fame began before the projects, during an earlier crypto cycle.

Yeh Junde once mentioned that he bought Bitcoin around $60 in 2013. Subsequently, he entered the Bitcoin OTC and bulk trading market as a managing partner at Binary Financial. By at least 2015, he had been frequently facing the camera at industry events such as Coin Congress and Money20/20, discussing Bitcoin prices, liquidity, and institutional funds. By 2022, he could even be interviewed by Bloomberg as the founder of the Quantum Fintech Group, discussing whether the crypto market would enter a "super cycle."

He wasn't pushed into the spotlight only after Tomb gained traction. Tomb gave him a larger stage.

Tomb initially ran on Fantom, with the core narrative being an algorithmic token anchored to FTM: as the price rose above the anchor, the system expanded; if it fell below, it contracted in anticipation of replacement gains.

At its peak, Tomb's protocol held over $16 billion.

By August 10, 2026, just two days after the Yeh Tower incident was exposed, this figure was less than $3,000, almost to zero.

Other projects have also left behind traces of decay. Both LIF3 and L3USD have essentially gone to zero. After all, even the networks they operate 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 zeroed projects might be thinking.

A quick search on Reddit reveals posts like "Is TOMB finance dead?" and "Is the TOMB/FTM LP Dead now?" Some wrote about putting around $1,200 into the TOMB/FTM liquidity pool, only to see their position shrink significantly after the anchor broke; others mentioned that their initial $2,000 investment was almost gone.

Death List in a Bear Market

Death always seems to accompany a bear market. The bear market that followed the collapse of FTX in 2022 had very clear signals.

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

A bear market can make people lose their common explanatory frameworks. During price drops, an undisclosed autopsy report, a still under investigation helicopter crash, a tweet expressing pre-mortem fears are all more likely to be magnified as part of an unsolved mystery.

Yeh Junde was no exception.

After 100 Projects Die

This is an unprecedented bear market, with all funds and people flowing out. No bear market in the crypto industry has been more brutal than 2026. It is estimated that to date, over 100 crypto projects have been closed, bankrupt, or permanently shut down, covering exchanges, wallets, lending protocols, NFT markets, and blockchains. The actual situation is definitely more cruel than 100 projects.

Money is flowing out. According to PeckShield data, hacker and fraud losses in 2025 amounted to approximately $4.04 billion, and in the first half of 2026 alone, DeFi theft reached about $972 million.

People are also leaving, with some not waiting for project liquidation. Sam Blackshear, the creator of the Move language and co-founder of Mysten Labs, recently announced his move to Anthropic to engage in defensive security research; Alex Atallah, co-founder of OpenSea, has gone on to start OpenRouter, and Dawn Song, founder of Oasis Labs, has joined Meta's AI team. As of March 2026, the 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 those who remain in the crypto space are still reopening the door to the crypto world.

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