# Crypto CEO Dies Holding Only Passwords That Can Unlock Millions in Customer Coins
The online startup can’t retrieve about C$190 million ($145 million) in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and other digital tokens held for its customers, according to court documents filed Jan. 31 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nor can Vancouver-based Quadriga CX pay the C$70 million in cash they’re owed.
Something fishy with this too. Seems like with that kind of money on the line a company like this has a better disaster recovery scenario. I would be curious to see if this becomes a fraud cause instead.
I doubt there’s fraud. The owner didn’t trust anyone else and rightfully so. A technological solution could’ve been put in place like a dead man switch that emails info to the next in charge but I’m guessing the owner never got around to it.
Can’t the RCMP just force Apple to give them the “Master Passwords”, like the FBI did with that terrorist case in San Bernardino?
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Apple never gave the FBI anything. They used an outside source to crack, then Apple changed it to make it harder.
That is one valuable laptop or a dead weight depending on your viewpoint.
A simple disaster recovery like a sealed envelope in a safe with two parties holding half of the combination is a pretty easy solution to losing $200 million!
The guy with the password to the cold wallet died of Crohn’s disease … in India. That story is all kinds of suspect.
The FBI procured a ‘tool’ (presumably an undisclosed exploit) to break into that phone for a mere $900k. Like any reasonable vendor, Apple presumably addressed that vulnerability as soon as they became aware.
The government idea of baking a master key into crypto was dumb when the clipper chip scheme was being hatched in the early 90s before ubiquitous internet access - it’s outright crackhead stupid now.
It’s easy to tell if it’s fraud. Watch the wallet. All transactions are conducted in the open with blockchain so there will be a smoking gun. If the money never moves then it’s probably not fraud.
Even if they money does move it’s impossible to tell who’s doing it. From the investors standpoint fraud and a colossal fuck up are exactly the same. They lose those funds and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
For me the takeaway is the risk of relying on someone else. Anyone wanting to own crypto currency would probably be better off learning about data security and setting up their own wallet.
There are a lot of ways to suddenly die but the way the principal went out is one of the screwiest possible ways. Perhaps it’s simply a case of the highly improbable happening, but other past irregularities with the company aren’t a good sign.
Thus the possible incentive for a bad actor. Even 10% yield laundering it months or years later is a nice haul.
Heck, as volatile as cryptocurrencies are, sabotaging a large stash of bitcoin then moving on any resultant market motion from other holdings could be rather profitable.
For cryptocoins? Sure. For the real world there are financial institutions that are regulated and deal in real money that you can actually spend on goods and services.
You may want to add an asterisk or registered trade mark in front of “Real Money” when claiming our fiat currencies as such. Kind of like how Genuine Leather is not always real leather but often time a vinyl based leather substitute.
I still think this looks fishy and is more likely to be a fraud case than an accident. I suppose time will tell but it doesnt sound like its on the up and up.
There are other sites that are claiming some of the lost LTC is moving.
There are surely critiques to be made of fiat currency, but the fact that you have to pay taxes in has made it quite real. Oh, and this:
Places that take BTC are rare; that take other cryptocoins vanishingly rare.
Those points are exactly why I would suggest the asterisk or TM or Registered Trademark. To me real money is backed by a physical item of value like a precious metal standard. Claiming one fiat currency as real, thus suggesting the other as fake, while both work on the same principals just seems deceitful. Though the US currency and other Nation based fiat currencies are more stable and accepted further than the other.
By that standard, there’s pretty much no real money left in the world any more. Yet the economy merrily goes about its business some ~8 decades since the Gold Standard effectively collapsed. We exchanged one set of problems for another in the process, but these problems have proven to be more manageable. There’s a need to hold politicians’ feet to the fire regardless to cut down on shenanigans regardless.
Anything resembling the definition of fiat currency - i.e. “issued by a government” - is something that crypto not only doesn’t meet but goes to great lengths to distance itself from lest it be subject to financial regulations.
Sure you can use BTC and other cryptocoins as a currency some places. But you could say the same about Putt-Putt tokens which can be transformed - via games of chance - into tickets which can be used to buy prizes. Or a better example: gift cards, which are pegged to a dollar value.
That’s the test - relative stability and acceptance.
Everyone surely remembers the Zimbabwe dollar of ~10 years ago:
Might have been worth $20 when issued - within a month probably worth more for the potential energy within the paper than whatever it would buy - but it’s hard to tell since the Y-axis on charts is exponential.
Eric,
Your example of Zimbabwe currency directly undermined your own argument. While some nation backed currencies are more stable and more accepted than BitCoin. BitCoin is more stable and more accepted than a good chunk of national currencies we don’t use readily. In all honesty, BitCoin may be in the top 20 or 30 most usable currencies in the global market.
I put all my money in Dogecoin. Was that a mistake?
If I’d argued that all fiat currencies are awesome and infallible you’d have a point. But I didn’t so … cool story bro?
Meanwhile, the USD inflated something like ~2%/year during that time period - flat enough that bothering to adjust for that inflation wouldn’t move the example ZIM dollar exchange rate vs USD much. Forex fluctuated a bit more, but we suffered little for it - perhaps if we’d worked on that debt-to-GDP ratio a bit harder it would have been more steady.
Heck, gold went through some wild gyrations in the last 10 years.
This statement beggars belief. The Argentina Peso is more stable than BTC.
BTC and other cryptocoins may have phenomenal market cap, but how often are they used as currency rather than a means of speculation?
There’s known to be a large mass of dead cryptocoins propping this up - coins that were mined when the stuff was nearly worthless and a USB miner or a SETI-like application was all it took - and the wallet passwords long forgotten. Were these liquid the market cap would have surely bottomed out harder from its peak last year as more as geeks cashed out at $5 and $10k to say nothing of $20k.
Anecdotal, but I know of one online retailer that accepts BTC. I mean, sure, as a US resident I’m far more likely to find a retailer that takes BTC than a foreign currency such as, say, the Icelandic Krona (ISK), but I imagine converting that currency via a bank or credit card company is painless relative to spending BTC.