Death of QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotton: What is the community saying?

News of Gerald Cotton’s death has certainly kicked up a storm. Cotton was the only person who had access to $190 million worth of customers’ funds. Now that he has passed away, people can’t withdraw their funds.

From questioning the absurdity of the situation through to full-blown conspiracy theories, here is a round-up of the responses from the crypto community.

Twitter user Boxmining, who has over 78,000 followers, noted:

“Co-founder Michael Patryn has been using a fake name. His real name is Omar Dhanani who was convicted of fraud (operating an online marketplace for identity theft) in the United States and was released in 2007.”

Meanwhile, Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, commented:

“Gotta wonder if there are Quadriga backups, just no documentation on their location. You wouldn’t fly around with $190m about your person, on laptop, phone, wallet, wouldn’t make any sense. And the CEO was an exchange operator, someone who knows IT and backups risk tradeoffs.”

Peter Todd, an applied cryptography consultant, tried to rationalise the situation:

“I think the psychology of the situation is people want it to be a scam, because at least there’s a chance the bad guys will get caught and the money returned. The current explanation of lost keys is a much worse outcome with no chance of getting the funds back.”

Nathaniel Popper, a technology reporter for the NY Times, took a pop at the crypto space with his response to an article he read on the situation:

“We lost $150 million in cryptocurrencies that we held for customers because our founder died and he was the only one with the passwords to the wallets. Welcome to the financial future!”

Elsewhere, a riled customer told CBC that he tried to withdraw $15,000 from his account back in October, but discovered that he could not withdraw his funds.

You can read more about the death of Gerald Cotton and how $190 million worth of funds is currently locked away here.