QuadrigaCX Exchange Funds Thought To Be Lost Forever After Declared CEO Death Are Moving
5 known cold wallet addresses of QuadrigaCX Exchange, which shut down after the mysterious death of its Founder and CEO Gerald Cotten, have started sending BTC out in the afternoon of 16th of December (PST). These addresses have been dormant since April 2018.
In 2019, the exchange ceased operations and the company filed for bankruptcy with CAD 215.7 million in liabilities and about CAD 28 million in assets. After the death of Gerald Cotten, the crypto owed to 115,000 customers was missing or could not be accessed because only Cotten held the password to offline cold wallets. There has been speculation for years surrounding Cotten’s death and since no one else has access to these funds this movement of funds is extremely suspicious.
Where are the Funds Now?
Our team used QLUETM to track the transfer of a large portion of the funds (24.01 BTC) equivalent to US $399,022 from the cold wallets to exchanges such as OKX (0.07 BTC), Huobi (11.23 BTC) and Poloniex (12.71 BTC).
QLUETM Graph: QuadrigaCX wallets sending out funds to different exchanges
The actors mixed 69.51 BTC (US $1,152,691) using two Wasabi CoinJoin wallets before sending them to OKX.
Another interesting thing about the transactions is how the recipient of funds from one of the cold wallets (1ECU) split and sent an equal amount of BTC to a new address on each hop.
QLUETM Graph: one of the recipients splitting funds with every transaction.
The accessor’s identity remains unrevealed as Cotten was allegedly the only one with the access keys to the cold wallets. Neither the management team nor his wife, who was accompanying Cotten at the time of death in India, shared that they had access to the wallets’ secret keys. The funds were concluded as forever lost.
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