Free Republic

But the money was already gone........ Millions of dollars were missing when the CEO of a crypto exchange died without sharing the passwords to his accounts. Investigators recently cracked his laptop — only to find the money was gone. Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, was thought to have had sole access to the funds and coins exchanged on it. After his death in December, his colleagues said that about $137 million in cryptocurrency belonging to about 115,000 customers was held offline in "cold storage" and inaccessible. The case has sparked numerous theories, including that Cotten faked his own death...

The QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange says it can't access some $190 million in bitcoin and other funds after its founder and CEO, Gerald Cotten, died at age 30 — without sharing the password for his encrypted laptop. Cotten was "the sole officer and director" of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange when he died, said his widow, Jennifer Robertson, in an affidavit that is part of the company's request for court assistance as it seeks protection from its creditors. The debt filing comes weeks after Robertson announced that Cotten had died — an event she described as "a shock to all of us."...