NIKOLAI Mushegian was the co-founder of MakerDAO, the largest decentralized finance protocol designed to remove third parties and other institutions from monetary transactions, who wanted to end global banking corruption.
But what is the story behind the blockchain developer and what was his net worth?
Who was Nikolai Mushegian?
Nikolai Mushegian studied at Carnegie Mellon University and graduated in 2014.
He donated around $1.4 million to the institution after leaving.
Mushegian then went on to co-found MakerDAO.
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MakerDAO was key in building stablecoin systems, which are currencies without government backing.
Mushegian left MakerDAO in 2018, after allegedly becoming dissatisfied with the project moving away from its initial idea of decentralization and opposition to government and traditional capital.
Rune Christensen, Mushegian’s MakerDAO co-founder, is still involved with the protocol and in 2022 launched partnerships with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as well as investing $500 million in US government bonds.
After parting ways with MakerDAO, Mushegian went on to build RICO, a decentralized stablecoin which he hoped would become the “spiritual successor” to DAI, MakerDAO’s stablecoin.
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Mushegian also co-founded the automated market maker Balancer and Reflexer’s RAI, which is an ether-backed stablecoin and a fork of DAI.
Before his death Mushegian became concerned the US government saw the cryptocurrency posing a risk to the dominance of the central banking system, and that there were plans to assassinate him.
What happened to Nikolai Mushegian?
Nikolai Mushegian was found dead at a beach in the Condado neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico in October 2022.
The 29-year-old’s body was discovered in the waves by a surfer just off Ashford Beach.
He was wearing his clothes and had his wallet on him.
Police in Puerto Rico have found no evidence of foul play but conspiracy theories have been fueled online because of a tweet shortly before his body was found.
Mushegian tweeted at 4:57am: “CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands.
“They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex-girlfriend who was a spy. They will torture me to death.”
Mushegian had sent a number of tweets before his death about fighting “evil” people who were part of the “central banking cartel”.
He claimed they used “debt and blackmail” as weapons.
Ameen Soleimani, the CEO of Spankchain said: “My money is on him being murdered.
“He was found drowned 4 hours after his riskiest tweet ever.
“He had all year to drown randomly or be mugged, so it seems unlikely that his death was unrelated to his tweet.”
In September 2022, Mushegian tweeted: “3 possible futures for me 1) suicided by CIA 2) CIA brain damage slave asset 3) worst nightmare of people who f–ked with me up until now, I am sure these are the only options.”
A former friend on Mushegian said: “He had mental problems.
“He saw a psychiatrist at times. He smoked a lot of pot. A tremendous amount.”
Rune Christensen said he spoke to Mushegian three months before his death and he was in good spirits but already showing concerns about government and criminal conspiracies.
Christensen said: “He seemed happy to be building his new stablecoin RICO.
“But he was also worried about a criminal group he believed was trying to interfere with his work.”
What was Nikolai Mushegian’s net worth?
Nikolai Mushegian’s net worth was reported to be around $5 million at the time of his death.
In 2020, Mushegian gave 10,000 in MKR, worth just over $4.2 million at the time, to his university Carnegie Mellon, Pennsylvania.
He wanted to set up a research program for dapps, protocols, and game-theoretic mechanisms.
Mushegian said at the time: “Research in the web3 space was done by players who automatically put their work into the public domain without a second thought.
“Nobody wanted to deal with lawyers, everyone wanted to build stuff.”
He added: “There was no threat from the established networks of banks and tech giants because they did not take us seriously.”
