QuadrigaCX Users Lose $190 Million Following Founder’s Death

The cryptocurrency community has been in awe over the past couple of months following the death of Gerald Cotten, who was the founder of the QuadrigaCX exchange. The 30 year old founder and CEO reportedly died in India from a fatal disease in December last year. However, before the passing, he took the virtual keys for digital wallets and moved them into cold storage. Now, QuadrigaCX users are left without a trace of the money that they lost, in combined value of $190 million.

As you probably know and as many best cryptocurrency news sites reported, QuadrigaCX first appeared in 2013 and quickly became one of the largest Canadian crypto exchange out there. The platform allowed its users to get cash or cryptocurrency via an online trading service by storing digital assets on the blockchain. These were only available in the same alphanumeric code, and because of that, Gerald Cotten was the only officer and director.

The QuadrigaCX users benefited when the market was young. However, little they knew that there are always sensitive issues linked to large losses of money and hacks. Since the market is also young, something like this should be expected from every exchange.

When the altcoin news showed the death of Cotten, it hit some people very hard – especially when it was revealed that he supposedly transferred the users’ funds from the exchange and used them as a security for his own margin trading on other platforms. The QuadrigaCX users then lost about $190 million as a result of this – and began a noisy trial.

The latest cryptocurrency news show that it is true that this may be a possible crypto fraud. The truth is, QuadrigaCX began experiencing difficulties with banks in the autumn of 2018 because of the inability to access their funds.

The case, however, did not develop until some QuadrigaCX users reported that they could not access their accounts. Even though in the beginning no one seemed worried about the case, users later began to gain momentum and asked for more details regarding Cotten’s death.

At the end of the day, almost all QuadrigaCX users are asking the same question now – “is Cotten really dead”?

No one can know the truth. For a man who does not have a history of life-threatening diseases, the case is really weird and suspicious. It is hard not to dwell on who stole the money and how much. The lesson that we can all learn from this is that users must (at first) protect themselves and check as much and as deep as they can to prevent issues like these from happening.