Court grants QuadrigaCX 30 days to find the missing $190M; lawyers consider selling the platform to settle debts

Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX has been granted creditor protection to settle debts which came into light following the sudden death of the firm’s CEO and founder, Gerald Cotten, reports CBC. Nova Scotia Supreme Court has granted the company a 30-day stay of proceedings to give QuadrigaCX time to find the missing 250 million Canadian dollars (~$190 million).

According to QuadrigaCX employees, Cotten was the only person with access to a recovery code to the so-called ‘cold storage wallets,’ which hold most of its 115,000 customers’ funds. "With a cold storage wallet, it's completely offline,” said one of the affected customers, Elvis Cavalic. “It's usually a physical device that you would plug into a computer and requires a button to be pressed and it might need a password.” 

Following the ruling, Cotten’s encrypted laptop will be passed over to a court-appointed monitor tasked with overseeing QuadrigaCX activities. CBC reporter Jack Julian, who attended the hearing, claims the company’s lawyers may consider trying to “negotiate a possible sale of the Quadriga trading platform to satisfy debts.”