Bitcoin Addresses Tied To Defunct Canadian Crypto Exchange QuadrigaCX Wake Up (coindesk.com) 42
More than 100 bitcoins tied to the defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX were transferred out of cold wallets thought to be beyond anyone's control over the weekend, after sitting dormant for more than three years. From a report: The company's bankruptcy trustee, Ernst and Young, did not initiate the transfers, CoinDesk has learned. QuadrigaCX went bankrupt in 2019 after the apparent death of founder and CEO Gerald Cotten. At the time of its collapse, Quadriga was believed to have owed thousands of customers nearly $200 million in various cryptocurrencies -- a staggering failure for what was once Canada's largest crypto exchange.
EY, which is acting as the trustee for Quadriga's estate, announced in February 2019 that it lost control of about 100 BTC after mistakenly sending the coins to Quadriga-operated cold wallets that the Big Four financial services firm said it couldn't access. At the time, the bitcoin was worth around $355,000 (C$470,000).
EY, which is acting as the trustee for Quadriga's estate, announced in February 2019 that it lost control of about 100 BTC after mistakenly sending the coins to Quadriga-operated cold wallets that the Big Four financial services firm said it couldn't access. At the time, the bitcoin was worth around $355,000 (C$470,000).
WOW (Score:1)
So now even E&Y are in on the scam?
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So now even E&Y are in on the scam?
I think Mr. Cotton has returned from the dead. Always thought that this situation reeked of a faked death on his part.
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So now even E&Y are in on the scam?
I think Mr. Cotton has returned from the dead. Always thought that this situation reeked of a faked death on his part.
Oops..... *Cotten
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In the third year he rose again.
Re:WOW (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:WOW (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer to "Is Mr. Cotton still alive?" is "Are companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands up to some tax shenanigans?"
The place he "died" is the world's top jurisdiction for faked death certificates. Points for actually having a plan to make off with the ill-gotten gains though, this guy is either the smartest or second-smartest man in the cryptocurrency industry so far, depending on how you rank everyone who stayed the hell away...
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100 coins is only $1.6m. If he'd managed to escape with $200m, it would be reaaaally stupid to snarf the last 1.6m and get people thinking about you again.
Re:WOW (Score:4, Interesting)
I can think of some reasons he may have only taken a little out:
- Difficulty laundering even more massive amounts.
- No pressing need for more: 1.6M is still enough to retire on.
- Maybe he wanted to "test the waters" and see what kind of reaction a small withdrawal would get before taking bigger risks to launder larger amounts. If it brings too much heat...well at least he already has enough to retire on.
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1.6M is still enough to retire on
Depending on how old your are and how long you plan to live, you'd be lucky to get a lower middle class lifestyle in an inexpensive part of the country on 1.6 million. Over 30 years, that gives you just $53,000.
If you want to retire on 1.6 million, you'd need very low risk investments with decent returns. The days of the 3% CD are long gone, but even then you couldn't pull much more than 50k/year giving yourself a 2.5% "raise' every year.
You can do better with a mutual fund, but your survival is now tied
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That's an incredibly American centric view. In most of the world 1.6 million is more than enough to live on comfortably for the rest of your life. This guy, if he did fake his death, is not living in America.
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Well, it's 1.6 million in USD on a US site so ...
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So we should expect the attitude that nowhere that's not the USA exists.
The thread is about a Canadian who was living in the Caribbean and would be very stupid to show up in any country with an extradition treaty to the US or Canada.
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No, just that if you're using USD on a US site that you just might be talking about expenses as they relate to the US.
As far as living in the Caribbean is concerned, the exchange rate in the Cayman's is something like 1:1.2. It's not going to get you all that far. Fun fact: US dollars and Bahamian dollars have been 1:1 for decades.
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Yup, I think we agree.
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That is good to know. I'll will be looking in to that later today.
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7 years is a looooong time. The rest of your plan sounds good but if inflation or "something bad" happens and your money is locked long term at only 5% you might be verrrry unhappy.
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No, E&Y are running a much larger, much more profitable scam and have for a very long time. Some crypto money is pocket change to them. They play with bigger boys. Like Wirecard...
More likely an individual E&Y junior found the keys and decided not to wait 5 years and 2 burnouts until he is made a partner. After all, how do you "mistakenly" transfer 1.7 mio ? You'd think a company tasked with certifying proper accounting would manage to make a transfer correctly.
TWITTER (Score:1)
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what's up with Slashdot's embargo on Twitter stories?
I for one welcome it.
PS: It's all on Twitter if you're interested...
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who cares, go check twitter.
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no, its really not a story. just because you care, doesn't mean anyone else does. this news exists elsewhere, stop complaining and go find it.
How do we know this? (Score:1)
How do we know all this? Isn't Bitcoin supposed to be anonymous and untraceable?
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Anonymity was never a function of bitcoin.
"Bitcoin is designed to allow its users to send and receive payments with an acceptable level of privacy as well as any other form of money. However, Bitcoin is not anonymous and cannot offer the same level of privacy as cash." - Bitcoin.org
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Next time, try to have a conversation without the insults. And if you did even a modicum of research you wouldn't have had to lash out due to embarrassment.
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Oh and from the creator.
"As an additional firewall, a new (address) should be used for each transaction to keep them from being linked to a common owner....The risk is that if the owner of a (address) is revealed, linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to the same owner." - Satoshi Nakamoto Inventor, Bitcoin
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It's the opposite of untraceable, but it's quite easy to be anonymous. You can (and many did) mine your own coins without ever providing anyone identification.
Converting those coins to cash might be a problem, but if the coins were ever actually usable as currency then it would have been anonymous. But as you say, not untraceable.
Re:How do we know this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Gerald smarter than Sam (Score:4, Informative)
Gerald Cotten, the Canadian who founded QuadrigaCX, was smarter than Sam Bankman-Fried founder of FTX.
He most likely faked his own death when his crypto exchange Ponzi scheme buckled ...
This is an early report on Quadriga founder Gerald Cotten [www.cbc.ca], and that he was a fraudster running a Ponzi scheme.
Here is a great documentary on this whole fiasco: Dead Man's Switch: A Crypto Mystery [www.cbc.ca] (which may not play outside Canada though).
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What about the other funds? (Score:2)
It sounds like $200m in total vanished/was lost, like for most of it they don't even know the wallets that were originally used to buy and store it??
Either way, this seems weird. It could be that Cotten has burned through his cash and needed a top-up, though for all the millions he would have walked away with I don't see him being able to spend it that quickly while trying to hide.
I wonder if someone else had access to the wallets all along and finally decided to cash out? Of course, that would imply Cotten
EY "lost" 100 BTC in 2019 (Score:2)
"Alex, the dev at Quadriga, was instructed to send these coins while the company was under the control of Ernst & Young, three years ago. They claimed to have accidentally lost the funds by sending to defunct wallets. Now it's suddenly moving again. Shocker"
"I have no idea who is moving them now, only who is responsible for them and who lost it in the first place"
Wait until SBF wakes up one day (Score:2)
and finds the hashcodes for a billion FTT coins on a piece of paper in the diary of his girlfriend.
*scary dorky laugh*