• Thu. Nov 21st, 2024

DòtunRoy.com

We Break the News

#Cryptocurrency: Investors cry foul as Gerald Cotten’s Cold Wallets Found Empty!

QuadrigaCX, a Canadian-based cryptocurrency exchange platform, has been in the news a lot over the past few months. Following the untimely death of its CEO, Gerald Cotton in December 2018, QuadrigaCX account holders have been locked out of their funds.

The 115,000 account holders have been in a frenzy and about what will happen to their $143 million. At the time of his death, Gerald Cotton was the only one with the encrypted keys to recover the funds. Now users are worried that access to the funds is gone forever.

However a new and dangerous twist has been added to their worries.

Following a successful bankruptcy appeal in February 2019, court appointed monitor, Ernst and Young has discovered that the QuadrigaCX Bitcoin storages have no funds.

Ernst and Young discovered six  Bitcoin cold wallets QuadrigaCX used to store cryptos away from hacking attempts. But unfortunately, five of the offline storages were empty. In fact they haven’t had any funds in them since April 2018.

Meanwhile the sixth storage was used to receive Bitcoins from another exchange account for transfers to Quadriga’s networked online wallet. And this was a less than $500,000 transaction which took place in December 2018.

“To date, the Applicants have been unable to identify a reason why Quadriga may have stopped using the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets for deposits in April 2018, however, the Monitor and Management will continue to review the Quadriga database to obtain further information,” Ernst and Young wrote in their report.

This is the latest drama in the QuadrigaCX issue and once again, it’s testing the credibility and security of the cryptocurrency industry.

According to various reports, late CEO, Gerald Cotton was the sole brain behind QuadrigaCX.

“Quadriga had no offices, no employees and no bank accounts,” the BBC reports. “It was essentially a one-man band run entirely by Cotten wherever he – and his laptop – happened to be.”

Even his wife had no idea how the business was run and neither did he provide her with any documents or even the password to his laptop before he died in India.

Going forward there’s still no understanding of what will happen.

Ernst and Young is also investigating whether some of the cryptocurrency could be secured on other exchanges. But for now, it hasn’t found anything useful.

Investors remain worried and the entire crypto industry is paying keen attention to the developments and hoping it won’t affect their credibility.

By News Editor

Our News Editor, Muyiwa is an information management expert and Development Blogger with more than a decade experience in investigative reporting and journalism. He is passionate about human angle stories to all social issues in Nigeria and Africa.

26 thoughts on “#Cryptocurrency: Investors cry foul as Gerald Cotten’s Cold Wallets Found Empty!”
  1. Hi just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren’t
    loading correctly. I’m not sure why but I think
    its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different internet browsers and both
    show the same results.

  2. Today, I went to the beach with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to
    my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She
    put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit
    crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back!

    LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone!

  3. You really make it appear so easy together with your presentation but
    I to find this topic to be actually one thing that I feel I would never
    understand. It sort of feels too complicated and extremely large for me.

    I’m having a look forward for your subsequent submit, I’ll try to get the cling of it!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

seven + five =