CEO of Canadian Exchange QuadrigacX Dies With Private Keys of Millionaire Cold Wallet

In what can only be described as a bizarre and unfortunate event, Geral Cotten, CEO of the Canadian cryptocurrency Exchange QuadrigaCX died suddenly on a trip to India. The news would not be interesting if it were not for a very particular twist: Mr. Cotten was the only one with the private keys of the cold wallet containing the tokens managed by the Exchange.

According to the affidavit filed by his widow, Ms. Jennifer Robertson, Cotten died suddenly, so no one knows the private key that allows access to the cold wallet of the exchange, which had

26,488 BTC;
11,278 BCH;
11,149 BSV;
35,320 BTG;
199,888 LTC and
429,966 ETH.
Lost funds amount to about $190 million. Cotten was the sole manager of the funds and was in charge of transferring the cryptocurrencies from a cold wallet to a hot wallet manually. The reason for this “one-man operation” was for security reasons: Cotten wanted to protect the funds from being hacked, preventing possible inside jobs.

The Exchange published an official message to its users, suspending all services and operations. In this message, they explain that all attempts to recover the keys or obtain a backup of said wallet have been unsuccessful.