Over 100 BTC claimed to be inaccessible was moved out of cold wallets tied to QuadrigaCX, the exchange that went bankrupt in 2019 after its CEO allegedly died
More than 100 BTC tied to QuadrigaCX moved out of cold storage wallets over the weekend. Quadriga's bankruptcy trustee …
The newly active wallets challenge the practical assumption behind the earlier claim that the cold storage was inaccessible. For the bankruptcy process, wallet activity becomes evidence that needs to be traced rather than simply treated as permanently lost.
First-order effects
Quadriga’s bankruptcy trustee and creditors gain a concrete set of transactions to examine, including who controlled the wallets and whether the moved BTC can be connected to estate assets.
The assertion that these holdings were unreachable is weakened, raising the evidentiary importance of wallet-control records in the exchange’s insolvency.
Second-order effects
Creditors’ recovery assessments may need to distinguish between assets that were truly unavailable and assets whose custody or ownership remains unresolved.
Other exchange failures face sharper scrutiny of cold-storage claims: moving funds to cold wallets, as FTX US said it had done after unauthorized transactions, does not by itself establish who can later authorize transfers.
Third-order effects
If similar wallet movements continue to surface in failed exchanges, insolvency administration will place greater weight on auditable custody controls and transaction tracing than on labels such as “cold storage.”
The trend: Crypto exchange failures are exposing that offline custody is only as reliable as the documented controls over the keys and the ability to verify them.
Five wallets attributed to QuadrigaCX unexpectedly moved ~104 BTC on Dec 17 for the first time in years. 1ECUQLuioJbFZAQchcZq9pggd4EwcpuANe 1J9Fqc3TicNoy1Y7tgmhQznWrP5AVLXj9R 1MhgmGaHwLAvvKVyFvy6zy9pRQFXaxwE9M 1HyYMMCdCcHnfjwMW2jE4cv9qVkVDFUzVa 1JPtxSGoekZfLQeYAWkbhBhkr2VEDADHZB
Quadriga Bankruptcy Inspectors are aware funds are moving. Thank you blockchain investigators @Lornestar & @zachxbt for following flows & @nikhileshde for reporting We're working to gather more information & I hope stolen funds can be recovered https://www.coindesk.com/...
UPDATE: Ernst and Young, Quadriga's bankruptcy trustee, did not move the 100 BTC out of the exchange's wallets, CoinDesk has learned. @nikhileshde reports https://www.coindesk.com/...
for those new here the question of whether the CEO of #QuadrigaCX is dead or just pretending to be dead is crypto's answer to “Where is Jimmy Hoffa?” we can't know for sure but The Almighty #Blockchain has given us a sign. https://twitter.com/...
Over 100 BTC tied to @QuadrigaCoinEx's cold storage wallets moved. Three years ago, QCX bankruptcy trustee @EYCanada said it didn't control those wallets, though it's unclear if that's changed. Even odder, @zachxbt found nearly 70BTC went to mixer Wasabi. https://www.coindesk.com…
@zachxbt I got one of the last physical cash withdraws from QuadrigaCX. They shipped me 50k in cash. It smelled like mothballs as if the cash was stashed in an attic somewhere. https://twitter.com/...