{"id":7609,"date":"2019-02-17T10:40:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T10:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/quadriga-the-cryptocurrency-exchange-that-lost-135m\/"},"modified":"2019-02-17T10:40:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T10:40:04","slug":"quadriga-the-cryptocurrency-exchange-that-lost-135m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/quadriga-the-cryptocurrency-exchange-that-lost-135m\/","title":{"rendered":"Quadriga: The cryptocurrency exchange that lost $135m"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"GeraldImage copyright<\/span>
\n Facebook\/Quadriga<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Gerald Cotten
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When the 30-year-old founder of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange died suddenly, he took the whereabouts of some C$180m ($135m; \u00a3105m) in cryptocurrency to his grave. Now, tens of thousands of Quadriga CX users are wondering if they will ever see their funds again. <\/p>\n

In 2014, one of the world’s biggest online cryptocurrency exchanges – MtGox – unexpectedly shut down after losing 850,000 Bitcoins<\/a> valued at the time at nearly $0.4bn (\u00a30.3bn).<\/p>\n

Its meltdown shook investors in the volatile emerging marketplace – but the calamity at the Tokyo-based company proved a boon for a new Canadian online cryptocurrency exchange. <\/p>\n

“People like the fact we’re located in Canada and know where their money is going,” Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten said at the time<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Some five years later, Cotten’s sudden, untimely death has left thousands of his customers scrambling for information about their own missing funds. <\/p>\n

“We don’t know whether or not we’re going to get our money back,” Tong Zou, who says he is owed C$560,000 – his life savings – told the BBC. <\/p>\n

“There’s just a lot of uncertainty.” <\/p>\n

This month, Quadriga – which had grown to become Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – was granted temporary bankruptcy protection in a Canadian court. <\/p>\n

The firm said it had spent the weeks since Cotten’s death trying desperately to “locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves”. <\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Broken representations of the Bitcoin virtual currency
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In court documents, Quadriga says it owes up to 115,000 users an estimated C$250m – about C$70m in hard currency and between C$180m an C$190m in cryptocurrency, based on recent market rates. <\/p>\n

It believes – though it’s not certain – that the bulk of those millions in reserves was locked away by Cotten in cold storage, which is an offline safeguard against hacking and theft.<\/p>\n

For now, all trading has been suspended on the platform. <\/p>\n