BTC investors are out $190m after the only guy with the password dies, firm says

miamiherald.com

15 points·ConceitedCode··7 comments

Note that other sources are suggesting that there is evidence that the cold wallets at issue never existed, the firms was shuffling coins from new investors to pay withdrawals before the supposed loss, that Quadriga previously claimed to use multisig wallets, and that the whole death-and-lost-keys story may be fake.

https://cryptonews.com/news/the-quadrigacx-case-just-got-a-w...

I would bet $50 that the guy is not dead. It can't be that expensive or difficult to get a fake death certificate in India. Either the cold wallet never existed in the first place, in which case their company was an elaborate ponzi scheme, or he's absconded with the contents of it.

Maybe dead but other people may have thought it's a nice excuse to pretend the money is lost. Few years later, it may move again.

A very expensive reminder that the "bus factor" is a real threat. Most startups I've worked at had (at least at one point) only a single person with passwords to things like the AWS root account, and other similarly important things. What happens if that person disappears? Scary stuff for anybody on the hook for business continuity.

And you really believe they have lost $190mn or they pretend it's locked up until everyone forgets about the news?

> A very expensive reminder that the "bus factor" is a real threat.

The bus factor is a real threat, but there seem to be fairly serious questions about whether bus factor is anything but a cover story for fraud here.

But it does raise questions about whether the company was civilly negligent in safeguarding company assets. Board members and/or high ranking company officers may have legal exposure.

(IANAL)

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