
$190M missing after crypto exchange Quadriga CEO dies - scosman
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/streetwise/article-quadriga-cant-access-190-million-following-ceos-death-court/
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seibelj
Edit - This _is a conspiracy theory_ but it doesn’t mean it’s totally crazy -
there is a good chance this “dead” CEO is still alive.

Very shortly before his death he got his affairs in order and flew to India.
Then it’s reported he died along with a death certificate from India. Now they
can’t find $200mil in crypto and are not reporting the cold storage addresses.

Would not surprise me if there has been massive fraud here, whether the CEO is
alive or not. Everything is too convenient.

If you want to read posts from many sad and pissed off people, their subreddit
is full of them
[https://www.reddit.com/r/QuadrigaCX](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuadrigaCX)

~~~
sidyapa
I am from India and trust me, finding a public toilet is more difficult than
faking a death certificate

~~~
doorbellguy
Are you trying to be dramatic just for the sake of it? Because finding a
public toilet (aka sulabh shauchalaya) is not difficult AT ALL.

Source: I've lived in 7 cities in India all my life.

~~~
derp_dee_derp
That's the joke: it's super easy to fake a death certificate in India.

~~~
doorbellguy
Thanks for the clarification. English not being my first language, I find it
difficult to catch jokes if they're worded that way.

~~~
danaur
As a native English speaker it still is ambiguous to me

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wolco
Great I just moved 50 dollars over and was going to use it yesterday but
decided to wait. Cryto is like a game of hot potato where the most important
thing is not to be the last holding the potato when the music stops. It's been
slowly going down over the last year as people give up on an upswing and
checkout at a lower price.

Using bitcoin as currency always made the most sense over a store of value.
The exchanges have all of the properties of a 1910 bank just waiting to get
robbed while the bank manager has already taken the loot from the vault.

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Torn
Full text: [https://outline.com/nVDP65](https://outline.com/nVDP65)

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disqard
Thank you!

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tigershark
The amazing thing is that BTC is still 3.5k after the countless money heist
that happened. Actually I really thought that it was dead after Mt. gox. I
guess that it’s Darwin at work here.

~~~
bouncycastle
It actually works the opposite. Every time a heist or loss happens, coins are
being removed from circulation, making all remaining circulating coins more
scarce, thus more valuable in the long term (market takes a while to reflect
this).

In heists, the coins become tainted and very difficult to sell as everyone can
see their origin.

Mtgox removed quite a lot of BTC from the circulating supply.

~~~
celticninja
No it didn't, those coins got back into the supply before the theft was
reported publicly. I think the coins stolen from bitfinex are still sitting
there so it does happen, just not with the MtGox theft.

~~~
bouncycastle
Ahh, yes. That's right, a lot of it 'disappeared' without being noticed or
reported, so reentered circulation fairly quickly. How much of it was
successfully laundered though? Didn't they catch the guy suspected of
laundering them? (Someone behind btc-e if I recall)

Don't really want to split hairs here, but there's still 137,891 BTC left in
Mt Gox cold wallets that has yet to be liquidated by the administrators. (Out
of the 200k that was 'found'). That's quite a significant amount by anyone's
calculation.

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puranjay
Crypto is a scam and the only reason anyone should partake in it is to either
test your gullibility, or scam others.

Anything that 4chan's /biz/ board promotes aggressively is a scam 9/10 times

~~~
blunte
Many plants in nature will kill you if you eat them, but can you say that
"Plants are deadly to humans"?

It's a bit like money. Money itself isn't bad, but people do incredibly bad
things to get money. Likewise, crypto isn't "a scam". People make a lot of
scams related to cryptocurrency, but that doesn't mean many of the concepts of
cryptocurrency are bad or a scam.

Bitcoin may be quite imperfect, but it's also quite useful for exchanging
value quickly and cheaply, and without banks getting to decide if you can or
cannot.

~~~
kkarakk
would you accept payouts from a person(in the US) who only agreed to pay you
in Zimbabwean dollars? that's the argument you're making...sure the currency
has value but are you prepared to stomach the risk that dealing with it
entails?

~~~
mruts
Well not to buy a pizza, probably not.

But if I wanted to buy drugs, then, yeah probably.

Also 90% of the population is in the developing world where it might actually
be the case that BTC is more trusted than their local currency.

I think it’s myopic to consider the value of crypto against the 1st world’s
banking system with respect to ‘standard’ transactions.

The value lies in either: ‘non-standard’ transactions (buying black market
goods) or in developing nations.

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demxzy
Even in majority of developing countries, it's better to keep your money in
Fiat or even USD account(where allowed) becuase you don't suddenly loose 80%
in a month or two (Exceptions bring countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela).
Sure, you could loose say 20 to 30% due to fiscal adjustments due to many
factors over a year, but almost everyone in your country would likely be in
the same boat as you and things like PPP (for locally manufactured goods)
might adjust to minimize some of the impact

~~~
mruts
A lot of developing countries prohibit currency exchange. For example I moved
from the US to Tanzania about 6 months ago and the government has outlawed
currency exchanges. There are only 2 ways to get USD: 1) the black market,
which is expensive, 10% above the “fair” price 2) the National bank, which is
25% over the “fair” price.

I think BTC might be an attractive alternative here.

Moreover, by some measures, annual inflation is 7-10%. So holding the local
currency is highly penalized

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aphextron
This illustrates why, through extensive experience and interaction with
"blockchain" folks, I want nothing to do with the entire crypto industry. It
attracts the very worst of the worst. I'm sure there are plenty of honest
companies trying their best to legitimize this stuff. But the vast, vast
majority of it is just outright plundering and fraud by the most vile people
on earth.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
People have said the same about the Internet in the past have they not?

~~~
aphextron
Maybe. But the immediately apparent, world changing utility of the internet
couldn’t be denied. It didn’t need “evangelizers”, it took off because it was
a useful technology. I’ve yet to be convinced in the same way of a single
legitimate non-speculatory use for crypto.

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jen729w
The company, which presumably has more employees than this one dude, never
considered the fact that he was the only person who held the keys? C’mon.

I’m smart enough to have given a friend my 1Password emergency recovery kit
and, I tell you now, that ain’t worth $200m.

~~~
solotronics
who would you trust enough to give the private keys to $200m?

~~~
GordonS
You can break the key up into pieces, so no one person holds the whole key, or
use something like Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm.

~~~
scosman
They did that here. They lost 1 part of the key and now can't access anything.

~~~
GordonS
I thought it was obvious, but if you do this, you include redundancy.

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WrathOfJay
Color me surprised... surely not another crypto heist.

This is going to keep happening, over and over again. Put your money in this
stuff at your own peril.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
We created a nearly perfect way to quickly steal large amounts of money... why
would people take advantage of that!?

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onetimemanytime
Lotsa things don't add up and are just too convenient--based on paper
articles. But, unless he gambled /lost them, faking his own death probably not
going to ensure that he enjoys the loot. But then, not all think it to every
detail.

I would have faked a hack and announce that 8% of coins were stolen or
whatever. $15 million, means that at least he could have gotten half of it in
cash (assuming a laundering discount) and a lot more if the price rises.
Retire in a foreign country and be quiet.

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kkarakk
Yet another aspect of crypto's long term ignored consequences come to light. i
haven't seen ANY possible solution for transfer of crypto after original
owner's death. even ethereum doesn't have this simple ability inbuilt(which
you'd think would be obvious).

this basic question gets downvoted on any forum you'd think of - husband/wife
has large amount of money in crypto, they die due to unforeseen
circumstances(or even foreseen circumstances but it's a quick degradation of
mental facilities). who does the spouse approach for the crypto? they have
proof of death so why don't they get the money? poof, value gone - have fun
now you're a destitute relative coz you can't figure out passwords(most
grieving relatives can't)!

this is why no one trusts crypto,these simple things aren't a fundamental part
of the platform. you get people telling you these convoluted solutions(that
may or may not work). the fraud potential is sky high. is crypto only meant as
a transient toy?

~~~
jespern
That's like saying cryptography is faulty since if someone encrypted an
important document and threw away the key, it would be irrecoverable. That's
the point. As for solutions, there are many: use a multi-sig contract with
several owners (like a spouse and/or lawyer), or simply leave the seed phrase
to be released in your will. The proposed solutions that "may or may not work"
are easy to test, I'm not really sure where you get your information.

~~~
roenxi
> That's like saying cryptography is faulty since if someone encrypted an
> important document and threw away the key, it would be irrecoverable.

No, it is like saying cryptography has important long term consequences. I
don't even see any synonyms for "fault" in the post.

There are mechanisms if someone is careful about their estate planning, the
issue is we have a great deal of evidence that most people don't do estate
planning [0] and the courts have to clean up the mess.

Kkarakk is completely correct in saying that a (potentially non-technical)
spouse or heir is being exposed to an exciting new way of losing large sums of
money that they are entitled to. This is clearly a disadvantage of
cryptocurrency, even if it is an intentional part of the design.

[0]
[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36325871](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36325871)

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joecool1029
>Operators of other Canadian cryptocurrency exchanges called it highly unusual
for a single executive to be the only one with access to the company’s funds.

It's almost like they never heard of Mt.Gox and MagicalTux.

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lota-putty
Greed to make money without honest work led many along wicket paths. Stupids
will be slaugtered every now and then.

We have to learn when to participate & when not to. Learn to identify ponzi
shcemes, coz they're here to stay.

Analogous, stock-market & trading; bigger companies/fish will always reap
better than individual participants.

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gammateam
The 2017 FOMOers need a couple more of these

Everyone wanting to pretend to be Wolf of Wall Street and brag about not
understanding technology but making a ton of money trading it? This is easily
avoidable by all parties and their ignorance is catching up to them

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newsbinator
> The largest individual user account balance is valued at $70-million.

~~~
djohnston
ooof, although maybe if you have 70 mil in crypto it's only a fraction of your
wealth. otherwise you're an idiot

~~~
ghayes
It's likely a fund, not a single user's assets.

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cargo8
If you don't own your keys, you don't own your crypto.

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kzrdude
It's "$190M" in crypto currency, but I wonder how many dollars he's escaping
with.

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rblion
Not sketchy at all.

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alexcnwy
Paywall but can read article if you stop the page from loading before the
modal pops up

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m101
Remove the "Https://" bit and type in "www.outline.com/" and it should work
here and on many sites like it.

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ijb03qv7
No need to, really. Just prepend "outline.com/" to the full url.

    
    
        outline.com/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/streetwise/article-quadriga-cant-access-190-million-following-ceos-death-court/

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baby
I can't read the article, it is behind a paywall.

