QuadrigaCX Becomes Another Troubled Crypto Exchange

Canada Exchange

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Fredrik Vold

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Fredrik Vold

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June 26, 2023

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After crypto exchange Liqui announced yesterday that it is shutting down, a Canadian exchange by the name QuadrigaCX, ranked 154th by 24 hour volume on Coinmarketcap, has become a headache for its customers who have been unable to withdraw funds from the exchange for months.

The exchange’s website has also been unavailable for long periods of time, with various reasons given for the downtime. As of press time Thursday morning (UTC 08:00 AM,) customers of QuadrigaCX are met with this text when trying to access the exchange’s website:

As of press time, the company have not posted any updates on its Twitter account.

Top markets on QuadrigaCX:

QuadrigaCX’s problems started when it announced that the co-founder & CEO of the exchange, Gerald Cotten, unexpectedly passed away last month. Following his death, the exchange has been involved in disputes with various banks, and is reportedly struggling to find a bank that is willing to work with it, even just to process user withdrawals.

Now, according to court documents from the Supreme Court of British Columbia posted online by Coindesk, Jennifer Robertsen, the wife of the late CEO, is the beneficial owner of 43% of the shares of the company. The same document also states that Gerald Cotten was the only officer and director of the company, and that the company is currently “incapable of carrying out any functions at, all to.”

The published court document gives the impression that the exchange was run more or less as a “one-man show,” and it is therefore easy to imagine the kind of problems that would arise when that person dies. The same attitude was also expressed by users on Reddit, responding to a lengthy post by reddit user TRANSFERcase where he laid out the known facts of the case.

One of the latest updates from the company was posted to Twitter on January 11, explaining the progress (or lack thereof) in the process of returning funds to the exchange’s clients. According to the update, the company estimated it would take two weeks to carry out the transfers.

Today, 17 days after the update was posted, QuadrigaCX’s clients are still wondering when they will get their money back. As many experts have stressed, crypto users should keep their private keys to their coins offline, e.g. in hardware wallets such as Ledger, Trezor, KeepKey and others.

We’ll update the story should the exchange responds to our request for comment.