The head of the largest American cryptocurrency company Coinbase, Brian Armstrong has announced the results of an independent investigation into the canadian bitcoin exchange QuadrigaCX, which presumably no longer have access to users’ cryptocurrency funds worth $137 million. Thus, the company was able to discover clusters that are more likely to be QuadrigaCX’ cold storages. According to analysts, the funds were transferred manually, and the withdrawal was completed in early 2018. He leans to the version that is associated with the events of almost two years ago. In June 2017, a bug in the QuadrigaCX’ smart contract turned into multi-million dollar losses for the exchange. The transfer of user balances to cold storage began just a little later. Probably, as a result of unforeseen losses, the exchange began to face serious financial difficulties, as well as liquidity problems. The scheme of withdrawal of funds from cold storage indicates that QuadrigaCX may have traded with users’ funds in order to patch the “hole”. At the same time, the situation in the market worsened, which could also hit the exchange quite hard. Armstrong suggested that at some point the negligence of employees played a role, which then was tried to be covered. The head of Coinbase stressed that users of QuadrigaCX had begun to complain about the problems with the withdrawal of money long before the death of Gerald Cotten. Thus, the management could come up with a story about private keys on the CEO’s laptop to hide insolvency, one of the reasons for which could be the inefficient management. |
