QuadrigaCX Still Missing $100M In Bitcoin

Ailing crypto exchange QuadrigaCX is still missing $100 million in bitcoin.

According to CoinDesk, Ernst and Young (EY), QuadrigaCX’s court-appointed monitor, released its third report on the exchange late last week, providing blockchain addresses for its cold bitcoin wallets.

But aside from the $400,000 worth of bitcoin that was accidentally sent to the cold wallets last month, they are empty — and $100 million in bitcoin is still missing.

In February it was revealed that Canada-based QuadrigaCX  could not get a hold of $190 million in crypto held on behalf of clients because the firm’s 30-year-old founder, Gerald Cotten, who died in India in December 2018, was the only person who knew the passwords to “cold storage.”

On Friday (March 1), EY finally identified six bitcoin cold wallet addresses that it says Quadriga used. Five had already been identified by independent researchers after the exchange transferred 103 BTC in a “platform setting error.” On Friday afternoon, the total balance of these five wallets was 104 bitcoin, or about $400,000.

But the sixth address has no bitcoin holdings, although 31 BTC ($118,000) were transferred out from the wallet just days before Cotten’s death. That leaves 26,350 bitcoin (worth about $100 million) still owed to customers.

“The Monitor has made inquiries of the Applicants as to the reason for the lack of cryptocurrency reserves in the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets since April 2018. To date, the Applicants have been unable to identify a reason why Quadriga may have stopped using the Identified Bitcoin Cold Wallets for deposits in April 2018, however, the Monitor and Management will continue to review the Quadriga database to obtain further information,” according to the report.

EY did not reveal if there were additional bitcoin cold storage wallets in addition to the six published. But around $21,000 CAD ($16,000 USD) have been deposited to Quadriga’s hot wallets since its initial filing on Jan. 31. EY is working with the exchange to figure out who has been making those deposits.