Quadriga InitiativeIt All Started One Cold Day in January
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians across the country awoke to a new reality.
- Canada's largest and oldest cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, at one point handling 80% of trading volume across the country, was down.
- The CEO Gerald Cotten, trusted and known personally throughout the industry for over 6 years, was apparently dead while on a trip to India.
- An estimated $190 million CAD in funds were inaccessible, supposedly locked in a cold wallet which nobody could access.
Canadians had been Lied to for 6 Years
Over the next few weeks, it was revealed:
- The cold wallets were completely empty. All their funds they believed they were trading had long been spent.
- Gerald Cotten had written his will only weeks prior to the trip to India, an event which hadn't been reported for more than a month.
- At this point, there were meager deposits in hot wallets and some funds frozen in bank drafts, representing roughly $30 million CAD.
And Things Continued to Get Worse
Over the coming months, events continued to deteriorate:
- The exchange originally filed under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), and E&Y was appointed as monitor. A significant quantity of cryptocurrency was lost through a "platform settings error", over 103 BTC.
- Representative Counsel (Miller Thompson) appointed an Official Committee, who determined that no restructuring was possible. Bankruptcy and liquidation of all assets meant no hope of rebuilding.
- The latest news shows that over $2 million CAD of the original meager remaining deposits have been spent, and E&Y, now trustee of the bankrupty will not be held to account for the 103 BTC.
Help Us Do the Right Thing
These funds represent the hard work, hopes, and dream of our friends, neighbours, and family members. We have a path to bring hope and a better future for the thousands of defrauded Canadians across our country.
We are building up Canada's first Proof of Reserves exchange, and we hope to push this as a standard.
It continues with our token program, which provides affected users with tokens each representing $1 of verified losses, a new cryptocurrency that allows for a decentralized recovery to occur.
Businesses in the community, starting with our exchange partner, can assist affected users through token-accepting promotions. We make it easy and win-win.
To be a part of our project, sign up below: