Quadriga Exchange Charges Now as High as $1.6 Million

Just to add onto the woes of what was a pretty grim year for cryptocurrency, users of the Quadriga CX exchange were on the brink of losing their investment… and they didn’t even know it.

At the end of 2018, users of Canada’s biggest crypto exchange assumed that failure to withdraw their funds was just a technical bug that would get swiftly fixed. But this was instead something a lot more serious.

Flash forward to the start of 2019 and everything came to light as to what had happened with Quadriga. Unfortunately, the exchange's founder Gerald Cotten had passed away but what made this situation worse was that he was the only custodian of the private keys which allowed for the transfers from the exchange’s wallets. 

To this day, $190 million worth of cryptocurrencies are locked away, never to be seen again.

One user stated:

“I wasn’t using it [Quadriga] for trading. I just wanted to move my money over to my Canadian bank account. What I didn’t know was that my withdrawal would be pending or incomplete, and it never got deposited in my bank account. I’ve been waiting [for months].”

Cotten’s widow, Jennifer Robertson said, “after Gerry’s death, Quadriga’s inventory of cryptocurrency has become unavailable and some of it may be lost. [Therefore], the company’s access to currency has been severely compromised.”

The exchange placed Ernst and Young (EY), an international professional services company, as a monitor in order to ensure transparency and a quick recovery.

After working on the case, expenses needed to be dealt with. In helping pay off these expenses, Judge Darlene Jamieson gave the go ahead for $1.6 million. Out of the $190m owed, the 115,000 users will have to share the recovered $25 million.

The judge said:

“There being no expressed opposition to the activities and accounts as presented by the monitor nor to the fees of its legal counsel, I approve the fees and activities to the monitor during the CCAA (Companies’ Creditor Arrangement Act) proceedings and the fees present towards legal counsel. The monitor’s work has been extensive in administering the CCAA proceedings and seeking to recover funds on behalf of Quadriga and its affected users.”