Five wallets associated with the now-defunct Canadian cryptocurrency platform QuadrigaCX were just observed trading about $1.7 million worth of bitcoin after lying dormant for years. Cryptocurrency analyst ZachXBT discovered the transactions, noting on Twitter that 104 BTC ($1.75 million) were moved on December 17.
According to a tweet by ZachXBT, two addresses were transmitted to the cryptocurrency mixing site Wasabi, which is frequently used to obscure the transactional history of specific bitcoins. The bitcoin addresses associated with QuadrigaCX have been dormant for the past three years.
Was EY behind the transfer to recover lost funds?
In 2019, QuadrigaCX’s court-appointed monitor in the creditor protection action, Ernst & Young (EY), presented a tip. On February 6, Quadriga unintentionally transmitted 103 BTC (or around $350,000) to “cold wallets which the Company is currently unable to access,” according to EY’s preliminary status report to the Canadian court.
According to EY, the monitor is collaborating with management to recover this bitcoin from the numerous cold wallets. Blockchain experts previously associated these five addresses with QuadrigaCX wallets; these are the exact five addresses now in use.
Uncertainty surrounds the conditions of the most recent bitcoin transactions. However, Magdalena Gronowska, a QuadrigaCX’s creditor committee member, revealed that EY had not transferred the cryptocurrency, indicating any involvement from the bankruptcy trustee.
Separately, Gronowska tweeted that the QuadrigaCX bankruptcy examiners know that bitcoins are flowing. To learn more and maybe retrieve the cryptocurrency, they are now investigating.
Around three months after its founder Gerald Cotten tragically passed away while traveling in India after suffering complications from Crohn’s illness, QuadrigaCX, previously one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy, after which his wife Jennifer Robertson revealed that she was unable to find the company’s passwords or financial documents.
Thousands of consumers were left without money since Cotten alone held the private keys of QuadrigaCX’s operational wallets (as opposed to the five digital wallets that were recently active).
Although these claims have not yet been confirmed, his death spurred debate and rumors that he had staged his own demise to steal customer monies. Cotten’s body was previously exhumed at the request of the authorities to establish his demise. This new development comes after coinbase also made massive withdrawals leaving a question of why all the withdrawals and why now after all the years, especially now that withdrawals are increasing amid a rise in FUD.
