QuadrigaCX plot thickens as cold wallets are found to be ’empty’

The QuadrigaCX saga continues to rumble on as a recent report has suggested five out of the six cold wallets used for storage by the exchange have been empty since April 2018.

Recently, Coin Rivet reported on the death of QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten, who passed away after complications from Crohn’s disease while he was travelling in India.

Cotten was reportedly the only person at QuadrigaCX who had the private keys to access the exchange’s funds. It is believed that around $190 million worth of funds had been lost as a result of the incident.

QuadrigaCX has been under court-approved creditor protection since February 5th 2019.

Ernst & Young has been tasked with sorting through the exchange’s dealings as a monitor. According to Bloomberg, the firm found six cold wallet addresses belonging to QuadrigaCX – five of which have been empty since April 2018.

Reportedly, the sixth cold wallet “appears to have been used to receive Bitcoin from another cryptocurrency exchange account and subsequently transfer Bitcoin to the Quadriga hot wallet” on December 3rd 2018.

The firm stated that the only activity that has occurred in the sixth wallet since then appears to be an inadvertent Bitcoin transfer last month.

A preliminary review of the cold wallets has indicated that from April 2014 to April 2018, the aggregate Bitcoin month-end balances ranged from zero to 2,776 Bitcoin.

An additional 14 user accounts which had been initiated outside of the regular process have also been identified. Reportedly, these accounts had artificially created deposits and were used for trading.

Ernst & Young has reached out to 14 exchanges about potential dealings with QuadrigaCX and have received no responses from four of them.

Interested in reading more news about the Quadriga saga? Discover how more than 600,000 Ethereum belonging to QuadrigaCX has been found at other crypto exchanges.