Kostya Kudo: The Kyiv Crypto Trader Found Dead the Day After the 10/10 Crash

On the morning of 11 October 2025, police in Kyiv's Obolon district found a 32-year-old man dead in a Lamborghini Urus. Police said he had died from a gunshot wound and that a firearm registered in his name was in the car. Ukrainian media identified him as Kostiantyn Hanich, better known online as Kostya Kudo, a crypto trader, blogger and co-founder of the trading school Cryptology Key. English-language outlets transliterated his surname as Galich or Galish.

The day before, the crypto market had suffered the largest single-day wipeout in its history. Kudo's death quickly became, for many people online, the human face of that crash. What the police later established was narrower and sadder: a young man under heavy financial pressure who had sent his family a farewell message.

The trader with the supercar

Kudo built his public image on trading and on the life it seemed to pay for. He ran Cryptology Key, which sold courses on how to trade digital assets, and posted to tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, Telegram and YouTube; Obozrevatel put his Instagram audience at about 61,000. He was listed as director of a public organisation called the Association of Traders of Ukraine and owned a quarter of TSTA Consulting, a company set up in September 2023. According to company records cited by Obozrevatel, its net profit for 2024 was 97,000 hryvnias, a few thousand dollars.

He also traded with other people's money. Ukrainian outlet 24 Kanal, cited by Obozrevatel, reported that about $7 million of investors' funds was in his trust management, meaning investors had handed it to him to trade on their behalf, much as a client might give a broker discretion over an account. Telegraf reported a much higher figure, at least $30 million in investor losses. Neither number has been confirmed by the police or by any court. In an earlier interview, Kudo had said a previous project closed after a partner took control of its crypto wallets, and that he received many threats from investors afterwards. Days before his death, an investigation by a Ukrainian project called 190 alleged that a business partner in a token platform called Furmula had withdrawn about $2 million of investors' money while Kudo acted as the project's public face. Those allegations have not been tested in court.

In his last Instagram video, Kudo said that "the picture and reality differ."

The crash of 10 October

On 10 October 2025, after US President Donald Trump announced new 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports, crypto prices fell sharply in a matter of hours. Many traders had borrowed to make bigger bets, a practice called leverage. When prices fall far enough, exchanges automatically close those borrowed positions, the crypto equivalent of a margin call that sells a share trader out of his holdings. That day about $19 billion of positions were wiped out this way, the largest such event the industry had recorded. Some smaller coins briefly lost almost all their value.

Obozrevatel, citing 24 Kanal, reported that Kudo may have lost about half of his own and his investors' money in the crash. That too is unconfirmed. The police have not published any figure for his losses.

What the police found

As is standard in Ukraine for a violent death, police opened a criminal case under Part 1 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code, which covers intentional killing, with the note "suicide". The police said that the day before he died, he had told relatives that his emotional state had worsened because of financial difficulties, and had sent them a farewell message. He had told his girlfriend he had serious financial problems.

On 20 October 2025, Kyiv police said that after analysing surveillance camera footage, investigators had established that he took his own life. The formal pre-trial investigation remained open.

Not everyone accepted that. An unnamed investor who knew him told Telegraf that Kudo had "a cold and stable mind" and that he believed he had been killed over debts. Posts online made further claims about wealthy and powerful clients, including people linked to Ukraine's military. None of those claims has been supported by the police or by any published evidence, and no one has been charged with any crime in connection with his death.

A year on

By October 2026 no new findings had been published. The police conclusion stands: suicide, linked by his family's account to money trouble. How much of his investors' money was lost, and to whom it was owed, has never been publicly settled.

Online, his death was widely linked to the 10 October crash, though the police never drew that connection themselves. Whatever the exact cause of his money trouble, it showed something the liquidation figures did not. The $19 billion was spread across millions of accounts, and some of those accounts held money that other people had trusted to one person.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 (US). Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741. International Association for Suicide Prevention: https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/