https://bitcoinist.com/quadrigacx-death-funds-moved/
Quadriga CEO Death – Funds Moved From ‘Lost’ Cold WalletsA company with legal problems; a mysterious death; missing customer funds. The QuadrigaCX story could have come straight from the pen of a hack Hollywood writer. Well now, the internet’s faithful crypto-investigators, claim to have found evidence of transactions initiated from the supposedly ‘lost’ cold wallets. The Litecoin wallets, at least.
Let’s Start With a Quick Recap
QuadrigaCX is Canada’s
largest cryptocurrency exchange, although it has just filed for creditor protection, following months of transaction delays. Customers are naturally concerned about their funds, as all assets are temporarily frozen… supposedly.
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Unfortunately, explained Quadriga, and Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson, the $250 million worth of cryptocurrency of customer funds is stored in cold wallets are not recoverable as only her dead husband knew the private keys.
Is this for real? Did this guy just fake his death and stole the money?
Or did he spent the money long ago and now they were practicing fractional banking?
This is terrible news. This may be a good opportunity for everyone out there who trusts binance or bitfinex or tether or whatever to just move your funds to your own wallets!!!
Canada is a very serious country, with a very reliable financial system, and it happened there! With its largest exchange!! Imagine what can happen to a chinese exchange.
Regardless of whether the news of his death was fabricated or not - it does reveal a very important problem that lies with all centralised forms of exchanges, wallets, etc.
I'd say that the a lot of the exchanges don't hold full reserves of what they get from deposits. The reason is simple, they are most likely able to spend this bitcoin elsewhere to finance the development of their own site or invest in things, while paying no interest. Of course, they aren't going to tell the public this, because otherwise people would be rushing to get their funds out.
That's what you should expect to be the case when you do come across any stablecoins, any hosted wallet services, and any exchanges. Don't expect them to have every dollar on each deposit, because they probably will not. And also, even if they do, they have the capacity to suspend your account or freeze your funds at any given time as well, which is why in most cases, a trustless bitcoin wallet should be used for long term storage of funds, not centralised exchanges.