People have searched landfills for lost Bitcoin millions and we’ve seen a secretive heir to a banking fortune die on the way to rehab leaving behind hundreds of millions in crypto with no way to access it. But nothing compares to the situation that is playing out with Canadian crypto exchange Quadriga CX.
If you haven’t been following the Quadriga saga, here it is in a nutshell. Quadriga is a crypto exchange that was run by a 30-year-old Canadian named Gerald Cotten who allegedly died in India in December. His widow alleges that the exchange was run by Cotten from a single encrypted laptop for which no one has the password. Consequently, about 115,000 customers of the exchange cannot access ’s cannot access their funds, totaling more than $140 million, according to an article on NDTV.com.
Why the “allegedly” caveats?
First off, there is online buzz about whether Cotten actually died. He is alleged to have died unexpectedly in an Indian hospital from complications of Crone’s disease on December 9. His company did not announce his death until more than a month later.
Court documents indicate Cotten finalized a will only a couple of weeks before he died, leaving nearly $10 million to his widow, according to a report in The Financial Post.
The situation has led to online speculation and anger.
Questions also have been raised about the storage of crypto assets by Quadriga and the alleged inability to access them.
“The Quadriga story doesn’t make sense. The one amazing thing about blockchains is that anyone can audit, in essence, any company.”
Emin Gün Sirer, a professor at Cornell University and co-director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts, as quoted by NDTV.com
The situation has now been turned over to the courts. Quadriga filed for protection from creditors in a Nova Scotia court, and the court has appointed accounting firm Ernst & Young as a monitor. Stay tuned as the details emerge.
