QuadrigaCX was one of the darkest fraud in crypto

And the death of the founder is not confirmed yet

December 2018:

- the CEO Gerald Cotten dies in India at 30

- the exchange says he was the only person with the keys

- 215M CAD becomes unreachable

- around 76,000 users are stuck

at first, the story was simple

cold wallets exist, but nobody can open them

then the OSC report in 2020 changes everything

- it was not a hack

- it was a long fraud

- 169M CAD missing

- 115M tied to fake trading using fake accounts and fake balances

- wallets were already empty since April 2018, months before his death

so the key problem was never the real problem, there were no coins left to unlock

And the death details are messy

- no autopsy in India

- closed casket in Canada

- his last name misspelled on the death certificate

December 2022

- 104 $BTC moves

- four years after Cotten’s death

- those BTC came from five cold wallet addresses EY had sent to by mistake in February 2019

- EY says they did not move the funds

- a big part was sent into a Wasabi CoinJoin flow

someone had access, just not the public, and not the victims

There’s still Ethereum sitting there

a labeled Quadriga wallet is still holding:

- 67,317 ETH

- around 201M dollars at recent prices

- mostly untouched

- small dust activity this year

the blockchain remembers everything

but this story still has a hole in the middle that never closed