Craze Around the Quadriga Exchange
The recent death of Gerald Cotten, the CEO of the Quadriga exchange led to many troubles. First of, allegedly, Cotten was the only person (Canada) who had access to the cold wallet of Quadriga, so $135 million worth of cryptocurrencies are locked for the users of this service. This situation raised serious questions and debate on the web about the solutions that should have been made to prevent such an outcome. Nevertheless, Cotten is gone and the rest people associated with Quadriga are facing a hard time. Moreover, there is an FBI investigation going on. So now the company’s logo became really amazing.
The Investigation and the Comments Made by Jesse Powell
Currently, Quadriga fails to withdraw the funds and the activity of this exchange is frozen. When it became known that the Cotten’s widow Jennifer Robertson cannot provide access to the company’s cold wallet to investors, creditor protection was filed by the company.
According to the news that came on March 6, despite the fact that Quadriga will have 45 days of extension on the protective order, FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police are already investigating the possible malicious activity. $135 million worth of cryptocurrency is not that sum that can be forgotten just because of the incredibly bad management. There’s a chance that actually at least some of this money could be retrieved.
A crypto exchange Kraken CEO, Jesse Powell, was probably contacted by both agencies over the QuadrigaCX case. He can’t agree with the official version stating that the coins were “misplaced”, and says that the money wasn’t in the cold storage, and the analysis of the blockchain ledger points at the fact that the coins went to some hot wallet, and then moved to the third-party exchanges.
Kraken offered a $100,000 bounty for the information that will help the agencies to figure out where the money is gone, and who is to blame. Powell hopes to minimize the reputational damage of the entire crypto industry that followed after the locking of the Quadriga wallet. Also, the Kraken CEO states that the representatives of the exchanges who had transactions from Quadriga should help the investigation, too. According to CoinDesk, Binance (why I’m not surprised?), Bitfinex, and Poloniex are among of the exchanges that received the money from Quadriga. Moreover, the transactions were made just before the tragedy. It seems that people from these companies will have to provide explanations.
Both FBI and RCMP are yet to claim that there are any allegations against Quadriga. The investigation will show if there really was something criminal in this case.
Several Suspicious Details More
Some believe that the changes made by Cotten in his will 12 days before his death are suspicious. He left his millions and the estate to his wife, Robertson. Is it really so strange, considering the fact that Cotten had a severe illness? Probably not.
What is really concerns, is that the co-founder of Quadriga is a criminal who used to steal the identity data and was involved in money laundering in the past. It is believed that he’s responsible for the recent disappearance of 103 BTC which were sent to the cold storage “by mistake”.
It is no surprise that many of angered people can’t exclude that Cotten could fake his own death. The fact that he died in India raises suspicion and doubts, although there is no evidence pointing that this version can end up right.
The Final Thoughts
All we can do here is to hope for a fair investigation, no matter if it is an ongoing investigation by FBI and RCMP or some independent investigation. This case is too dark. What we actually see there is that the reputation of Quadriga has been trampled. But there’s a hope that this scandalous situation won’t affect the entire crypto community in a negative way. The truth and the return of the coins to the owners should prove that our community is mature enough to cope with serious challenges.
