
BTC investors are out $190m after the only guy with the password dies, firm says - ConceitedCode
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article225501940.html
======
dragonwriter
Note that other sources are suggesting that there is evidence that the cold
wallets at issue never existed, the firms was shuffling coins from new
investors to pay withdrawals before the supposed loss, that Quadriga
previously claimed to use multisig wallets, and that the whole death-and-lost-
keys story may be fake.

[https://cryptonews.com/news/the-quadrigacx-case-just-got-
a-w...](https://cryptonews.com/news/the-quadrigacx-case-just-got-a-whole-lot-
more-complicated-3309.htm)

------
walrus01
I would bet $50 that the guy is not dead. It can't be _that_ expensive or
difficult to get a fake death certificate in India. Either the cold wallet
never existed in the first place, in which case their company was an elaborate
ponzi scheme, or he's absconded with the contents of it.

~~~
h1d
Maybe dead but other people may have thought it's a nice excuse to pretend the
money is lost. Few years later, it may move again.

------
freedomben
A very expensive reminder that the "bus factor" is a real threat. Most
startups I've worked at had (at least at one point) only a single person with
passwords to things like the AWS root account, and other similarly important
things. What happens if that person disappears? Scary stuff for anybody on the
hook for business continuity.

~~~
dragonwriter
> A very expensive reminder that the "bus factor" is a real threat.

The bus factor is a real threat, but there seem to be fairly serious questions
about whether bus factor is anything but a cover story for fraud here.

~~~
solatic
But it does raise questions about whether the company was civilly negligent in
safeguarding company assets. Board members and/or high ranking company
officers may have legal exposure.

(IANAL)

