New episode of The Missing Cryptoqueen!

And why I hate 'publication day'

Yesterday, after 18 months of waiting, we published a new episode of The Missing Cryptoqueen. Exciting? Nope! I like working on these stories, but I hate the day they are published. That’s the side of publishing - whether it’s a book or a documentary or a podcast - you don’t usually hear. ‘TX day’, as it’s known in the trade, is generally horrible.

There are lots of reasons for this, and I think plenty of journalists and writers would agree.

First, you’re finally putting your work and ideas out in public. It’s easy working on a story in secret - beavering away, imagining how it will ‘land’ when the big day comes. But once it’s out you suddenly feel quite exposed; no longer really in control of your story. It’s transformed from yours to everyone’s. And people misinterpret it, and misunderstand it.

Second, you live in a fear of getting something wrong. No matter how much time and effort you’ve spent researching, fact-checking and proof reading, you spend the whole day in fear of having made some dreadful mistake. Some critical error. And believe me, people will tell you about it.

Third, it’s a slightly confusing day. On the one hand you want everyone to listen to your work - otherwise, why bother? But if the story blows up - that makes problems 1/ and 2/ potentially even more pronounced.

And on a very basic human level, it can be quite restless. It’s hard to concentrate, because you’re pacing up and down worrying about problems 1-3. Which requires near-constant social media checking. And that makes for a generally dissatisfying day.

Anyway - I wrote all this in case anyone out there imagines I spent the day throwing a huge party. I didn’t.

If you’ve not yet heard the podcast, it’s here.

It’s an examination of a new theory about Ruja’s whereabouts: that Ruja was killed in around late 2018 by people associated with organised crime in Bulgaria, and her body was dumped in the Ionian Sea.

The reason it took us so long to release a new episode is because this theory was first published by Bulgarian investigative journalists back in 2023. At the time we were halfway through making an episode examining possible other leads. The story meant a complete change of focus, and a sudden diversion into a world I knew very little about: organised crime in Bulgaria.

This is much harder to investigate than cryptocurrency scams, and obviously more dangerous. As a result we had to team up with Bulgarian specialists and investigative journalists from BBC Panorama. That all takes a lot of time. And if I’m honest, it’s not really my area at all. I am and always have been a technology writer. What’s more, there’s always a personal safety risk involved in these kinds of investigations, and that risk is hard to estimate. The worry, even if it is tinged with paranoia, is very real. That is also disruptive and time consuming. This is why it took 18 months.

Had I known this was where the story might one day lead, would I have started all the way back in late 2018? I’m really not sure. Perhaps not. But that’s not how journalism works. You follow the leads, and try to get somewhere towards the truth, even if it is uncomfortable. So that’s what we’ve done.

And as for the theory that Ruja was murdered in 2018? I remain on the fence. It’s definitely possible. It would make sense, given how long she’s been vanished without a trace. But then again, people can and do go on the run for years. And we have had multiple, credible sightings of Dr Ruja long after the date of her supposed murder. As a journalist, you like to work with hard facts if possible. You want to find the killer bit of evidence, and state ‘this is what happened’. The story of Dr Ruja is just not like that. It is a world of maybes and possibilities. And, for now at least, remains exactly that.