Virtual currency chief found dead in Singapore
Singapore police are investigating the “unnatural” death of Autumn Radtke, a US citizen who was chief executive of one of a growing number of virtual currency exchanges based in the Asian city state.
The 28-year old cloud computing expert was found dead last week at an apartment block in Singapore.
Ms Radtke was recruited by Singapore-based entrepreneur Douglas Abrams in 2012 to head First Meta Exchange, which accepts bitcoin to buy and sell other virtual currencies used in online games. Ms Radtke’s Linkedin profile describes the company as “an early pioneer in digital banking and virtual currency”.
Singapore police said that they had discovered a woman’s body lying motionless in at an apartment block after they had “received a call requesting assistance”.
“She was pronounced dead at scene by paramedics. Police are investigating the unnatural death,” a police statement said. A spokesman confirmed that the case involved Ms Radtke.
The final post by her on her Facebook page was a link to an article in Inc., an online publication, entitled “The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship”, chronicling the stress of running a business.
“The First Meta team is shocked and saddened by the tragic loss of our friend and CEO Autumn Radtke,” said a statement on First Meta’s website. “Our deepest condolences go out to her family, friends and loved ones. Autumn was an inspiration to all of us and she will be sorely missed.”
First Meta recently moved into digital payments across southeast Asia, a region where “micro-payments” on mobile devices is taking off amid the emergence of a middle class made up of young, tech-savvy consumers.
The relatively relaxed stance of the Singapore authorities to virtual currencies such as the bitcoin has attracted bitcoin operators to the island nation, which is already Asia’s largest foreign exchange trading hub.
Singapore has taken no firm stance against the virtual currency, unlike China and other Asian countries.
Last week’s collapse of Mt Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that had been among the most popular platforms to trade and store the virtual currency, has prompted some countries to reassess their stance on bitcoin trading.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore last month said it would consider whether it might need to introduce regulations for bitcoin, and last year warned consumers about the risks of trading in virtual currencies.
Asia’s first bitcoin vending machine opened in Singapore last week. Taiwan, by contrast, has banned bitcoin vending machines, or automated teller machines.
Ms Radtke’s Linkedin page describes her as having worked in “enterprise cloud computing” first with Apple in 2007, later declining a job offer there to “stay in the fast paced world of technology start-ups”.
Mr Abrams told the FT: “She was introduced to me as a very promising young entrepreneur. She was young but she was not unusually young for a start-up company CEO.”
In 2008, she joined a founding team of Geodelic, one of the first companies to provide mobile location-based services across the Android operating system. She was responsible for global business development, dealing with telecoms groups such as T-Mobile, Korea Telecom and Verizon Wireless.