Gerald Cotten, founder of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died in December 2018 in India due to complications from Crohn's disease. He was the only person with access to the private keys of approximately $190 million in customer assets stored in cold wallets.

The exchange subsequently announced that these funds were inaccessible, resulting in approximately 115,000 users having their assets frozen, and the company filed for creditor protection and ultimately went bankrupt.

An independent investigation revealed that Cotten had previously used multiple fake accounts (including Chris Markay) to conduct fraudulent deposits and trades, misappropriating customer funds, which essentially constituted a Ponzi scheme and fraud.

The Ontario Securities Commission officially recognized QuadrigaCX as a fraud and Ponzi scheme, and the whereabouts of the funds have yet to be fully recovered.

Despite having a death certificate and hospital records from India supporting his death, some victims and observers still question whether he actually died, suspecting a possible faked death exit scheme.

Netflix released a documentary titled "Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King" in 2022, detailing the incident and related controversies.

From a market mechanism perspective, the incident exposed the centralized risk of having a single person control the private keys, with funds flowing from user accounts to inaccessible cold storage and misappropriation paths; early exiters benefited while customers unable to retrieve their assets and the trust-based exchange model suffered.

This case has become a typical warning for the cryptocurrency industry regarding the principle of "not your keys, not your coins."

Source: Public Information