Millions of dollars worth of digital currency have reportedly vanished after it was found out that the wallet where it was being stored was empty. Following the death of QuadrigaCX founder, Gerald Cotten, exchange customers who were holding the particular digital currency wanted to know where their money was. A company was then hired to try and recover the crypto-cash, which was reportedly stored in a wallet on Cotten's laptop.
According to their estimates, the wallet that was on the laptop should have contained around US$137 million dollars worth of Bitcoin. The money came from deposits from traders and investors on QuadrigaCX's coin exchange platform. Prior to his death, Cotten was the only one who had access to the coin's deposits and funds. All of the money that was deposited and withdrawn from the exchange's website had to pass through him.
The firm that was appointed to recover the money first had trouble opening the laptop, seeing that it was still password protected. After having broken into the laptop, they then had to find the digital key to unlock the cryptocurrency wallet that was installed on it. The wallet was reportedly meant to be a sort of "cold storage" for the coin's investors. The wallet is also meant to be secure enough to prevent it from being stolen by hackers. The expected amount that was on the wallet belonged to more than 115,000 account holders who invested their money in QuadrigaCX.
Leading the recovery effort is a company called E&Y, who had investigators and experts trying to unlock the wallet. When the company was finally able to open the digital wallet, it was found out that it was totally cleaned out months before Cotten's death. According to the company, they really had no idea what had happened to the Bitcoins that were supposed to be on the wallet.
Upon further investigation, it was later found out that Cotten actually had 14 other user accounts on the exchange, which could have been used to covertly trade the investor's money. E&Y has launched another investigation to try and trace how much of the money was being exchanged through the trading platform. Due to the nature of the blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges, the company will still have a lot of work ahead of them before they can finally trace where the money went. One customer who had used the QuadrigaCX exchange platform had even offered a US$100,000 reward for anyone who could find out where the money had gone.
