A documentary on a 20-year-old crypto trader who allegedly turned $50 into an $8 million fortune last year has been removed by the BBC. The Crypto Millionaire was the title of the documentary, which chronicled the narrative of Hanad Hassan, a Birmingham resident who claims to have made a return of around 16,000,000% in a year by trading unnamed crypto assets. The piece was supposed to air this week, and it would have explored how Hassan had begun to give back to the community as a result of his newfound wealth, but it was canceled after the Guardian revealed on Feb. 10 that it had expressed problems about the BBC’s research: “The Guardian asked the BBC if it was confident in his claimed financial returns and questioned why the program’s promotional material did not mention that Hassan’s cryptocurrency Orfano was abruptly shut down in October, with many unhappy investors claiming they were left out of pocket as a result.” The Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson wrote, “The BBC swiftly said it had withdrawn the show but did not make any further comment on its editorial checks.” Hassan Had First Turned $50 Into $1M in Q1 2021 Hassan had first transformed $50 into $1 million in Q1 2021, according to a now-deleted promotional story for the program on the BBC’s website (that can still be viewed via web.archive.org), before going on to co-create his own ‘special cryptocurrency’ that distributes all of its proceeds to charity. The BB...
