Old Podcast Reveals Late Quadriga Founder's Bitcoin Storage Policy!

Once again, the story of the disappearance of Canadian exchange Quadriga's private keys comes to the forefront, and now crypto industry leaders are analyzing Gerald Cotten's statements he made in a radio podcast in 2014. Do you know the fate of the funds of 115,000 customers?

The late Gerald Cotten revealed the secrets of storing Bitcoin on his exchange in an old podcast!

In 2014, Gerald Cotten founded...Michael Patryn Canadian company QuadrigaCX, as of December 2019, had raised approximately $187 million from 115,000 clients, including $52 million in cash and $135 million in digital currencies.

In December 2019, Gerald Cotten died in India from inflammatory bowel disease, and his wife announced it two months after he was buried in an unknown location in India. The only key to $135 million in cash was buried with him Digital currencies. This has left thousands of investors on its platform in a state of extreme confusion. Because they do not have sufficient information about the future of their lost deposits.

While $135 million in cryptocurrencies remain inaccessible after Cotten's death, a podcast recorded in 2014 appeared in which Cotten revealed that he was using - at the time - a system combining paper wallets and powerful vaults- bank vaults to store Bitcoins. .

👈Read more: Three years after the resounding Quadriga scandal, where is Michael Patrin?

Specifically, in February 2014, Gerald Cotton was the featured guest on the True Bromance podcast. This is a Canadian audio program that covers various topics.

After discussing the launch of a new crypto exchange, the businessman explained that it is very important to keep your passwords (private keys) well. Otherwise you risk losing your cryptocurrencies forever:

"It's like burning money. Even the US government, equipped with the most powerful computers in the world, will not be able to recover the tokens if you lose the private key. In fact, it is impossible to recover them."

Cotton then stated that he preferred paper wallets for storing bitcoins and that he stored his clients' bitcoins this way:

"A paper wallet is a great way to store your bitcoins. The best way to do this is to take your private key, print it and store it in your vault. This way you can never steal your bitcoins , unless someone steals your vault, etc. (… “At Quadriga, we hold bitcoins belonging to other people. So we store them offline in paper wallets, in our bank vault .”

Will Quadriga customers ever be able to get their money back?

Although Quadriga's storage system has undoubtedly changed over the 5 years. However, this statement from the late Cotten resonates today, 5 years after his death and the huge losses suffered by around 115,000 users.

In fact, the disappearance of the key was not the first of Quardiga's problems: the platform faced a liquidity crisis against a backdrop of legal disputes with banks and the freezing of its accounts in early 2018 due to disputes over the real owner of the key. accounts. Investors therefore faced extreme difficulties in carrying out transactions and accessing their funds.

👈Read more: After losing the keys, how did Quadriga cold wallets resume their activity?

The crisis arose when Gerald Cotton's death and the disappearance of the keys were discovered, terrifying thousands of customers. But in December 2022, $1.7 million was transferred from 5 Quadriga wallets thought to be inaccessible. Has Gerald Cotton come back to life? Or have the wallets been decrypted? Or did someone know the keys and ultimately needed the money?

Investigator ZachXBT alerted the crypto community in a tweet on December 19, 2022. He highlighted five wallets belonging to the Canadian platform that collapsed in 2019, Quadriga. The contents of the alert indicated that these wallets were transferring around 104 BTC units to different wallets.

The death of Quadriga's founder was very mysterious and was followed by a stock market crash. This therefore raised theories that the founder faked his death as part of a scam to steal money or because of stock market problems that worsened since April 2018 and even after the alleged date of death of Cotin.

Actually, the podcast details weren't as new to us as many media platforms think, we mentioned that in A detailed article on the end of the Quadriga Cotten's statements before his death, as well as various hypotheses that analyze what happened on the Canadian Stock Exchange! Regarding the possibility of Quadriga customers getting their money back, this is absolutely out of the question.