The founder of cryptobirds died, leaving customers without $ 145 million: no one knows the password to the assets

The death of a Canadian entrepreneur has left the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange unable to access a whopping $145 million worth of bitcoin and other digital assets. The thing is that only the 30-year-old founder and CEO of the company, who suddenly died while traveling, had the password.

Photo: Depositphotoin

Representatives of the largest Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga said they could not regain access to digital assets after Gerald Cotten, his 30-year-old CEO and co-founder, died from complications caused by Crohn's disease, during a trip to India, writes CNN.

Many of the digital currencies stored at Quadriga are kept offline in accounts known as “cold wallets,” an effective way to protect them from hackers. Cotten appeared to be the only person who had access to such wallets, according to court documents cited by Canadian media and which published online on the CoinDesk cryptocurrency website.

This extraordinary case exposed the risks faced by investors, placing their assets in a poorly regulated industry. Kotten's death plunged Quadriga into a crisis and forced the company to struggle to get 100 000 back to its users. The company filed a claim for the protection of creditors in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia on Thursday.

“Over the past weeks, we have been working hard to resolve liquidity issues, which include attempting to locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves held in cold wallets,” the statement said. Quadriga on the website. “Unfortunately, these efforts were not successful.”

Photo: screen shot YouTube / CBC News

Kotten's widow Jennifer Robertson said that the laptop that Kotten used for currency exchange is locked.

“I don’t know the password or recovery key,” she said. “Despite repeated and diligent searches, I could not find them written down anywhere.”

The Canadian High Commission in New Delhi told CNN that she knew of Kotten’s death and provided consular assistance, but refused to disclose further details.

The company hired technical experts to try to crack Cotten's laptop and other devices and find the missing data, but Robertson warned that at least some of them "may be lost."

According to her, Quadriga also owes about 70 million Canadian dollars (53 million US dollars) in cash, which she cannot return, citing difficulties with access to funds through the traditional banking system.

Although the case is unusual, it is not the first. The cryptocurrency industry has previously faced security problems. Over the past few years, hackers have stolen various kinds of digital currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

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