A day back it was revealed that a handful of wallets connected to the now-defunct Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX abruptly moved 104 Bitcoins [BTC] out of cold storage. The said move was the first in more than three years. As pointed out in our article yesterday, the transfers were not started by Ernst and Young (EY), QuadrigaCX’s bankruptcy trustee.
The Big 4 accounting firm issued a statement on its part a few hours back. It acknowledged that it has “become aware” of the unauthorized movement of Bitcoin. It clarified,
“Ernst & Young Inc. acting in its capacity as court appointed Monitor and subsequently as Trustee in Bankruptcy worked with management and others to recover the bitcoin transferred to these wallets. However, the private keys associated with the cold wallets have not been located despite the detailed review.”
Re-confirming that EY did not initiate the transfers, the statement noted,
“The locked bitcoin remained within the Quadriga cold wallets until December 16, 2022, prior to the unauthorized transfers being initiated. The Trustee confirms that it did not initiate the transfers.”
The statement also listed the six addresses of the Quadriga cold wallets.
Furthermore, the Trustee and Representative Counsel are “actively” investigating the unauthorized transfers for the “benefit of the Estate.”
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Rewinding A Little
It is worth recalling here that QuadrigaCX went bankrupt in 2019 after the sudden death of founder Gerald Cotten. Post that, news soon spread that around $200 million in client property was missing. To safeguard user cash from hackers and other possible bad actors, Cotten had maintained control over all customer funds outside the company’s exchange platform. With his passing, however, the keys to these accounts were also lost.
Authorities discovered Cotten had been mismanaging client cash and had transferred sizable sums into personal accounts rather than keeping them in cold storage wallets. EY went on to declare in February 2019 that it had lost control of around 100 BTC after accidentally transferring the currency to cold wallets managed by Quadriga. The accounting giant said that it could not access the coins because only Cotten had access to the keys.
Read More: Bitcoin From QuadrigaCX Moved For the First time in 3 years