The owner of the cryptocurrency exchange died and took with him the secret of 200 million dollars

At the stock exchange trading digital assets, QuadrigaCX had a problem of 200 million dollars without an obvious solution - and this story again underlines the uncertain status of cryptocurrency exchanges without proper regulation. The fact is that the exchange cannot get access to its own cryptocurrency reserves of almost $ 200 million in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and other digital tokens that are stored in the so-called cold wallets.

What happens to the Quadriga CX

Access to Quadriga CX Digital Wallets -application that stores keys for sending and receiving cryptocurrencies - was lost along with the death of Quadriga CX CEO Gerald Cotten, who died on December 9 in India from complications of Crohn's disease. He was 30 years old.

Cotten has always taken care of security - a laptop,The email addresses and the instant messenger he used to do business for five years were encrypted, according to his widow Jennifer Robertson. He took sole responsibility for managing money and coins, as well as for the banking and accounting side of the business and, to avoid hacking, he moved the "majority" of digital coins to cold storage.

His security measures are understandable. Virtual currency exchanges suffered at least five major attacks last year. Japan, which sheltered the most active exchanges with digital assets, also survived (or did not survive - here it’s necessary to understand) the two largest known cryptohacks: the fall of Mt. Gox in 2014 and theft of nearly $ 500 million in digital tokens with Coincheck last January.

The problem is that Robertson says notcan find no passwords or business records for the company. Experts were invited to attempt to crack Kotten’s computers and mobile phone, but their attempts were crowned with “limited success”, and it was not possible to crack the encrypted USB key.

After the death of Robertson, the Quadriga cryptocurrency inventory became unavailable, and some of them may be lost forever. The conclusion is very simple: keep cryptocurrency in your account and do not lose private keys.

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