Original title: Meet Joe McCann: the high-flying crypto track held in Tanzania after late death of his influencer fiancée Ashly Robinson
Original by Jack Kubinec, Fortune
Photo by Peggy Block Beats

Editor: In the narratives of the encryption industry, "asymmetric gains" are almost a tacit belief, with a limited downstream in exchange for a possible upturn. Joe McCann tried to make this logic into a business. His creation, Asymmetric, was accompanied by a bet on Level I investments and Level II transactions, with a rapid surge and volume in the market heating window in 2024: double assets, transactions work, individual brands and fund performance reinforce each other, and everything seems to be proving the model。

But the other side of the cycle soon emerged. As markets cool and liquidity shrink, volatile asset and narrative-driven strategies begin to fail. By 2025, the Fund had retreated significantly, with internal upheavals, repeated tactics and a loss of investor confidence. The "asymmetries" begin to reveal another dimension — while gains are magnified, risks are similarly delayed and magnified。

At a time when this has not yet been fully realized, an incident in Tanzania has completely disrupted this market-owned narrative. MacKin’s fiancée, Ashly Robinson, died suddenly during the holiday period, and the incident is still under investigation, but it has rapidly evolved from an individual tragedy to a focus of public opinion – the withholding of passports, the continuation of investigations, and the questioning of family members, leading to a more complex discussion of the Fund’s performance。

When individuals, capital and narratives are highly tied, any chain that is out of control quickly spreads beyond the boundaries of the market itself。

The following is the original text:

Joe MacKenzie's encrypted liquidity fund used to look good

Joe McCann, after entering the area of encrypted transactions, only two years, seemed to be a success. In 2022, the fund he created, Asymetric, raised funds from institutions such as Marc Anderson and Circle; its value nearly doubled during the period of the encrypted market boom that accompanied Donald Trump ' s return to the White House。

But then the situation began to spiral out of control。

By July 2025, the Asymetric liquidity fund had suffered a significant loss, which also prompted McKin to direct investors to a new project, which ultimately failed to meet expectations. Later this month, there were reports of the death of McKin's fiancée, Ashly Robinson, while he was on holiday with him at a luxury resort in Tanzania. Robinson ' s death was initially identified as suicide, but it was reported that the local police had seized McKin ' s passport and were questioning it as part of an ongoing investigation。

Malcolm and a young Net Red

Robinson's social media campaign named Ashley Jenae. According to one of her Instagram posts, she started dating Macon in November 2024. At that time, McCain's encryption company was at its peak. MacKenzie did not respond to numerous requests for interviews with external text messages。

MacKenzie was married to Shea Jackson in 2018, who was 10 years younger. The two eventually split up. According to the two founders who had accepted the investment of Asymetric Windward Fund to The Fortune magazine, part of the shares held by McCann had been transferred to Jackson. Jackson also failed to respond to the request for comment。

In addition, according to McKin on X, he had a daughter。

mackenzie started taking robinson, 15 years younger than herself, to a variety of encryption activities, and she started posting photos of both people in social media. robinson's social accounts show that two people are moving to multiple destinations, and she herself is gradually embracing what is called "soft life" (social media trends that emphasize self-care and easy lifestyles)。

She wrote at the last dynamic in Instagram: "I'm in the right place at the age of 31. The map is a picture of her feeding giraffes in Tanzania. Two days ago, the 30-year-old Net Red just released a video: 45-year-old MacKenzie proposed to her, while one of the lions in the future was slowly approaching。

According to local police reports, on 6 April, two men entered the luxury hotel Zuri Zanzibar in Zanzibar. However, following the dispute, hotel staff allegedly placed McKin in a different room from Robinson. On 8 April, a room attendant found her unconscious in Robinson's room and was taken to hospital on an emergency basis. The Tanzanian police identified his death as suicide。

Police reports also indicate that while McCann has not been formally charged with misconduct, his passport has been withheld by local law enforcement and is being questioned. In his statement, the Robinson family stated that their death was "suspicious"。

The collapse of encryption

Joe MacKenzie is known for "acting in his own way"。

He was born in 1980 at the Portland State University, where he studied philosophy, with a special preference for Nietzsche and Uncle Benhua. In his first 10 years of career, he moved to the science and finance industry, eventually becoming the CEO of a software company, and in 2019 promoted the acquisition of the company. After that, he worked at Microsoft, then started a new business and created a encryption fund. In a podcast in 2024, he mentioned that this time he wanted to "do something different"。

MacKenzie has shaped Asymetric (with two lines of business, both wind and secondary market investment) into a "financially prudent, culturally advanced" institution. Among the podcasts, he recalled that he had been a DJ before the creation of the company, had organized a rape party, had run a record company and had worked with his brother to create a clothing brand; he had also served as a CTO for a top advertising company in New York. He saw this long-term contact with the "human creativity side" as a unique advantage in his encryption investment。

In a number of interviews, McKin had shown that he had made an amazing return on a flowering mein coin. He also promoted his "cultural influence" by engaging with rapper Iggy Azalea, who later failed on the encryption project site. In addition, he had briefly launched a series of peripheral commodities on the theme of Asymmetric, accompanied by a well-produced and costly promotional video。

Over time, this has indeed translated into considerable returns. According to Wealth, one person with knowledge of the company ' s financial situation revealed that the size of Asymetric ' s liquidity portfolio increased from about $195 million to $395 million in 2024. However, this performance still lags behind Bitcoin's up to 121% increase that year。

Although the book returns brightly, Asymetric is not calm inside. According to the source, the founding member and core trader, Chris Cécere, chose to leave at a time when company performance had increased significantly in 2024. Cecere did not comment on this。

In 2025, as performance began to contract, McCain turned to a new encryption boom, Digital Asset Treasury, a model driven by Michael Saylor, whose company Strategy is a representative case. In a statement to investors in July, MacKin said that as a result of "changes in the market environment", Asymetric would abandon its proactive trading strategy and invest the remaining resources in building the Solana asset reserve。

The company had planned to hold an investor's presentation on 22 July, but on the same day, a disgruntled limited partner disclosed on X that the fund had lost nearly 80 per cent during the year. Shortly thereafter, this Solana strategy was quickly halted. A former investor indicated to Fortune that, in the process of liquidating liquidity funds, the final recovery was even lower than the initial principal investment。

Currently, the Asymmetric network lists only two venture funds and a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for investing in the Circle stock. The Team page has been put down, and one of the company's ordinary partners has not responded to the request。

Even if the company were in trouble, MacKenzie himself was active in the encryption industry, often speaking on his X account number of over 100,000 fans. In March this year, the encryption service MG Stover acquired the data analysis company he created Asymmetric Information。

But after that catastrophic trip in Tanzania, it became clear that the problems that MacKin faced were more than just investment losses. His fiancée ' s family is asking for further explanation of his death, and he is currently in the area。

It is ironic that, just in 2024, a podcast with a high career, McKenzie had summed up one of the risks that traders needed to be most vigilant about - "zero risk." "The pursuit of asymmetrical gains, i.e. the huge top space, the limited downside risks, must be combined with avoiding the risk of outright failure," he said。

He knows best what "can't lose everything" means, but his story eventually moves in the direction of "lost control"。

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