Jamie Bartlett - The Missing Cryptoqueen

Backstage at Londons Wembley Arena, Dr. Ruja Ignatova was nervously pacing up and down, dressed, as usual, in a full-length ball gown. I will double your coins, I will double your coins. She could hear the whoops and cheers of thousands of adoring fans in the background. Ruja wasnt usually nervous before events, but today she was announcing something that went against every rule of financial investmenteven the idea of money itself. If she couldnt convince the crowd, whod already invested a fortune in her promise of a global financial revolution, the whole thing would be over. Up to a billion dollars were at stake.

Her second-in-command, Sebastian Greenwood, was onstage warming them up. Im proud to be here today! he shouted. All of you are extraordinary! The pair had founded the company just two years earlier. And, of the two, Sebastian had always been the better salesperson. But 3,000 people hadnt travelled from 70 countries to see him. Theyd come for her: the genius behind the most exciting new cryptocurrency in the world.

Sebastian introduced Ruja in his typically over-the-top manner: The reason we are all here please give a warm welcome to our creator, our founder

This Girl is on Fire by Alicia Keys blasted over Wembley Arenas sound system and pyrotechnics lit up the stage. Every small detail, right down to the wording on the invitations, had been carefully planned. Ruja knew that appearance was everything, that people will believe anything if you look the part. She strode out confidently, her long black hair, the deep-red lipstick, the embellished red gown glittering under the spotlights, the diamond earringseverything exhibited success and glamour. Behind her a giant logo was engulfed in flames: OneCoin.

The investors in the audiencethe well-dressed Ugandan businessman, the devout Muslim from east London, the Scandinavian door-to-door vitamin sellercould recite Rujas backstory already. It was the reason most of them entrusted her with their money. Star student at Oxford University. A glittering spell in international finance with a top-end consulting firm. Only 36 years old but already two-time Bulgarian Businesswoman of the Year and Forbes cover star. Fluent in Bulgarian, German, English, French and Russian. Some of the crowd whispered that she had an IQ of 200+. Others wore badges with her face on them.

It was only two and a half years since shed had the idea that had changed everyones life. When Ruja first heard about something called Bitcoin in 2011, she was skeptical. She was from the world of finance and traditional banking, where things were done a certain way; money was backed by governments and run by central banks, as sure as night follows day. But the more she looked into this strange new virtual money, which operated online and outside banks or governments, the more fascinated she became. The inventor was a brilliant but mysterious computer coder who worked under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakomoto. Satoshi created Bitcoin in 2009 and subsequently vanished, but he left behind a blueprint for a whole new type of money that seemed tailor-made for the internet age. Money without banks or borders. A cryptocurrency that no single person controls, which can be sent around the world as easily as sending an email. Where most people saw a weird experiment, Ruja saw world-changing technology. She decided that instead of trying to make money buying and selling these peculiar new coins, she would go one better and make her own cryptocurrency.

In the tech world, she sometimes told the skeptics, its never the person who has the idea first who gets richits the person who makes that idea work for the man and woman on the street. Jeff Bezos didnt invent e-commerce; he simply made it accessible to everyone. MySpace came before Facebook, but it was Mark Zuckerberg who changed the world. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, even Thomas Edison took ideas that were already out there and turned them into something ordinary people could use. That was OneCoincryptocurrency for the masses. It might have been smaller than its better-known rival Bitcoin, but not for long. Ruja promised that it was faster, smoother and easier to use. She predicted that, one day, workers would get their wages in OneCoin. Buy their shopping in OneCoin. Anyone who invested now, before the price skyrocketed, would make a killing.