Dec 9th last year marked a difficult position for QuadrigaCX when the CEO of the crypto exchange- Gerald Cotten passed. Not only this, since January, last year, the exchange was not able to access a sum total of 16.3 million dollars of its own funds. This happened because five of the exchange’s accounts were frozen by IBC. These accounts belonged to the exchange’s owner ‘Jose Reyes and its payment processor, Costodian Inc. Just to add to the injury, the death of the CEO of the crypto exchange raised a question on the access of the 190 Million dollars/ $250 million CAD because the CEO did not leave any clue of the password to this amount.
Cotten’s wife filed an affidavit in January this year that the crypto exchange has no access to its wallets. Unfortunately, Gerald Cotten has not left any evidence of any passwords. QuadrigaCX CEO’S death had an impact on 115,000 users of the exchange.
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This situation made the court to intervene and appoint a lawyer to handle the situation in case the exchange can’t get access to the 190 million dollars. As per the reports obtained from CBC on 5th Feb., the lawyer will get an encrypted laptop of Gerald Cotten. This laptop will be given to an independent third party, This third party will be appointed by the court in order to supervise the crypto exchange’s actions during the bankruptcy operations.
The 190 million dollars were stored in a cold wallet by the CEO. This makes the court think that it is rather not a case of bankruptcy. In the court hearing yesterday, the crypto exchange requested for a 30-day stay of the proceedings in order to figure out how to access the inaccessible amount. This 30 days period will end on 7th March. In an unfortunate situation, if the crypto exchange fails to gain access to the amount, there are reports about the lawyers of the QuadrigaCX to think of selling the crypto exchange so that the company can settle any debts and therefore rest the case.
A death certificate issued by the Government of Rajasthan’s Directorate of Economics and Statistics was recently published by CoinDesk. The certificate states ‘that Gerald William Cotten died on Dec. 9 and Jennifer Robertson is mentioned as his widow’ as per the reports obtained from Cointelegraph.
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On Jan 29th according to CryptoNewsZ, there were reports about CIBC filing a petition to the Ontario Superior Court in order to withhold the funds, so that it can be understood to whom these funds belong to- ‘the Custodian’, ‘the exchange’, or ‘the users who have deposited their funds in the exchange.’ As a result of the request, the Court considered the petition and ruled to confirm the owner of the funds. As per the reports from Cointelegraph, this made CBIC to ‘pass the funds over to the Accountant of the Superior Court in order to identify the owner of the money.’
