Culture 2 min read

Crypto Update: QuadrigaCX Cold Wallets Mysteriously Found Empty

GaViAl | Shutterstock.com

GaViAl | Shutterstock.com

Things just got more complicated for Canada-based cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX. Reports recently revealed that the company’s cold wallets which previously held millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency are all empty.

QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten‘s widow, Jennifer Robertson, confirmed her husband’s death in an affidavit filed in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court last month.

Cotten allegedly died while doing charity work in India. Unfortunately, the deceased CEO was the only one with access to the cold wallets where the crypto exchange company stored the majority of its funds.

The Nova Scotia Supreme Court granted QuadrigaCX debt protection from its creditors and assigned Ernst & Young to monitor and help the company fix its financial dilemma.

Creditors remained hopeful that their investments were safe in the company’s cold wallets. However, Ernst & Young just reported that the accounts were emptied months before Cotten’s death.

Empty Cold Wallets

In its report, Ernst & Young identified revealed:

“From April 2014 to approximately April 2018, aggregate bitcoin month-end balances in the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets ranged from a low of nil to a peak of approximately 2,776 bitcoin. The average aggregate month-end balance over the four-year period was approximately 124 bitcoin.

In April 2018, the remaining bitcoin in the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets was transferred out bringing the balances down to nil. Other than the Sixth Wallet, there have been no deposits into the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets since April 2018 except for the inadvertent transfer of bitcoin by the Applicants as disclosed in the First Report.”

Apparently, the six cold wallets identified by QuadrigaCX as the fund storage of the company were drained last April; eight months before Cotten’s untimely death.

The 26,488 bitcoins worth $250 million in Canadian dollars held in the wallets were meant to be used to settle company debts and cryptocurrency obligations.

Adding mystery to the case is the continuous crypto deposits being placed in QuadrigaCX’s hot wallets from an unknown source. According to Ernst & Young, the deposits now amount to $21,000 CAD worth of cryptocurrency.

The report also identified three other cryptocurrency wallets allegedly created by Cotten. The company confirmed that the wallets received cryptocurrency transfers from the cold wallets.

At the moment, Ernst & Young is still working closely with QuadrigaCX officials in finding the missing crypto exchange funds.

Read More: QuadrigaCX In Crisis Following Founder’s Death

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Chelle Fuertes

Chelle is the Product Management Lead at INK. She's an experienced SEO professional as well as UX researcher and designer. She enjoys traveling and spending time anywhere near the sea with her family and friends.

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