What's cooking up with Quadriga CX after the CEO's death?

Gerald Cotten, the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga CX died in India last month on December 9. Gerald Cotten had filed a will on Nov. 27, 2018, as per which all his assets will be managed by his wife, Jennifer Robertson. He created the will only 12 days before his death making his wife the executor. However, this is not the major reason for the controversies being created.

 Gerald Cotten had the passwords to the wallet that had Quadriga CX  users' assets stored. The wallet had C$190 million or $145 million of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and other cryptocurrencies. The password was only known by Cotten himself which means that all the cryptocurrencies in the wallet are lost as the password cannot be retrieved.
Cotten owes to 115,000 registered users who have an account balance with Quadriga CX as he was the only officer and director managing the exchange wallet. Quadriga CX  owes C$190 million cryptocurrencies and C$70 million of cash to its clients. As per cryptocurrency experts and analysts, there might not be any cold storage or cryptocurrency at all.

As per the analysis, there were outgoing transactions from the main wallet addresses of QuadrigaCX after the death of Gerald Cotten. As mentioned earlier if he had all the control and credentials of the wallets and company accounts how is it even possible for anyone to make the transactions besides him. Some even term the entire incident as an exit scam due to suspicious events related to QuadrigaCX.

After analysis of company’s 31 Bitcoin addresses by Zerononcense, no proof of the existence of the cold wallet containing the cryptocurrencies has been found. Even Taylor Monahan, CEO of MyCrypto discovered that there's no ethereum cold storage for QuarigaCX after evaluating three main ethereum addresses. Research also states that no major transactions were made through the hot wallets of the exchange.

Justice Michael Wood from the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia has granted Quadriga a 30 day period to recover the funds and settle the claims to avoid any further law proceedings. Quadriga is also provided protection against the creditors for this period. Quadriga CX lawyers are now planning to sell the exchange to settle the debts. Cotten’s laptop will be handed over to the lawyers and the court for monitoring exchange-related activities.

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