Yet Another Tragic Lesson in Leaving Your Crypto Funds on an Exchange
Most of us know the perils of what can possibly happen to your digital funds being left on an open and public exchange. But literally how many different ways can there actually be for them to go missing or become irretrievable? Countless, by the looks of it. This is the latest "exchange-based" story nightmare to hit the airwaves.
If you've ever heard of *QuadrigaCX, then this news may not come as a surprise. Owner of this exchange, Canadian born Gerald Cotten, recently died of complications to Crohn's Disease whilst on vacation. That is bad enough, but even worse for his customers was that "he" was the only one privy to all the passwords and private keys to the whole operation. And worse still, all the data was working off a high-end encryption algorithm. So, in essence, everyone lost out in one way or another.
His incensed database of users are absolutely livid as you can imagine, with funds having been wiped out to the tune of approximately $136 million! Some have even said that he has faked his own death to disappear from the public eye completely and making off with a sizable fortune. His wife is apparently searching high and low for the missing passwords and keys, but so far to no avail. But it gets strange still. Only back in November 2018, he made a will making his wife sole executor and benefactor to his estate. This was just 4 months ago, citing more mysterious speculation as to something fishy possibly going on. But read into it what you will.
Well, at this juncture, it certainly doesn't look good. But it does drive home the message that in this unregulated game of crypto and your own security, anything can go wrong at any time unless measures are taken beforehand to prevent these instances from ever happening in the first place.
Knowledge is power and being forearmed is forewarned.
One of the guys I mine ETH with lost about $3K to this.
But he still hasn't learned ... I asked him if he has instructions in his will to find his keys/wallets/passwords. "No"
At the very least, folks with a decent amount of crypto should have instructions in their will to allow someone else to manage it ...
I guess this is like in the gold old days, where a house would burn down and the owner would be crying because they hid all of their cash in the wall/mattress/loosefloorboard etc etc.
Defo, buddy. I see this issue taking more prevalence in the future as the tech matures and price is much higher than it is now.
It's just wayyyyy to fishy of a story... a whole exchange where only 1 person was trusted to have the keys? Not even his wife knew where the keys were? And from what I was told someone moved LTC around in one of the wallets... the same wallets that supposedly no one has the keys... If he actually got away with all this money there is probably no way to find him.
Have you heard about that brazilian youtuber that got into BTC very early in the game? From what I read the government went after him and he was so rich that he disappeard, he sometimes moves the funds around, but no one knows where he is or what he is doing...
Damn! That Brazilian YouTuber is something I'd not heard of. Well, expect many more similar stories like this to emerge first before measures are put it place at a more serious level.
Wonders will never end in the world of crypto currencies and their centralize exchangers, that is why I always like trading on a decentralized exchange where I alone have complete control of my funds @ezzy
That's the way, @obest. :)
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With so many affordable and versatile options available in the Hardware wallets, I cannot understand why this continues to happen. Learning the hard is often the only way but those that suffer often will never come back which is the risk.
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