Translated material
Quadriga without horses
How to save pants in the world of virtual finance
The world press revels in a fairy tale about the 30-year-old director of the Canadian Exchange of QUADRIGACX Cotton Cotton, who died two months ago in India from a non-commercial illness, taking away “virtual keys for operations with digital currency” (I quote Volapyuk of colleagues in the workshop).
The amounts are reached with special pleasure, reminiscent in the context of the current purchasing power of compatriots, the monologue of Zhvanetsky about the “difficulties of cinema” (can beer, lobsters and cries “I am ruined!”). It turns out that in a crypto -core, which Gerald Kotten monopolized monopoline, QUADRIGACX customers were stored for $ 53.3 million in the form of fiducial money (read - ordinary dollars, pounds, euros, etc.) and another $ 144.7 million in cryptocurrency.
Last autumn, Kotten went to India, wrote a will there, handed over to his wife a yacht, a house, Lexus, a plane and two Chihuahua with a personal boarding house for 100 thousand dollars, after which he died from Crohn's disease (inflammation of the digestive tract), whose statistical mortality exceeds 2 times the mortality rate (for reference: the mortality rate of smokers exceeds 4 times).
Kotten moved into the world of another on December 9, 2018, and this event was of a culuar-family character until January 31, 2019, until the leadership of the Quadrigacx exchange went to court for protection against creditors. The fact is that for some reason, customers decided to pick up their money massively, but there was no money in Quadrigacx accounts.
Why? And therefore, the Quadrigacx exchange said that all its assets were stored in the “cold wallet” (that is, one that does not have access to the Internet), and only Gerald Kotten knew the password!
And now Kotten is dead, but there is no money.
The wife of the late Jennifer Robertson on January 25 legally assured her testimony that her husband had never told anything about the money of customers, she left no passwords to his wallets, and in general - she turned upside down, but did not find anything.
In short, you understand: there is no person - no problem. And this enchanting nonsense in complete seriousness is replicated by the world press, competing in search of the “true cause” of Kotten's death and evaluating the chances of independent experts to hack the protection of an encrypted disk in the deceased laptop.
The poor fellow citizens from the number of Quadrigacx customers have hung up on fierce conspiracyology: Gerald Kotten de never died (if only because they do not die from Crohn's disease), but staged his death and disappeared with other people's money.
The Coindesk portal was not too lazy to contact the Indian state authorities Rajusta and triumphantly put on public display an official certificate of death of Gerald Cotten.
Yes, yes, died. However, for 190 million dollars in India you are even blinding you from Mount Sinai.
It is difficult to look for a black cat in a dark room, especially when it is not there. Okay, I studied world financial scams for 20 years and I know that the scheme with the write-off of losses on the ZIC-chairman is something like a vagabal plot, which has nomaded in different languages and cultures for centuries. But even without the knowledge of precedents, one cannot help but notice the white threads sticking out of all the cracks of the fairy tale about the “cold wallet”.
As of the end of January, 286 thousand dollars remained on the accounts of the Quadrigacx exchange. The debt to 115,000 customers is 198 million 435 thousand dollars. Where is the money, Zin? Quadrigacx shrugs: in a “cold wallet”, and the key to it apparently ate Chihuahua.
Gerald Kotten was allegedly the only employee of the company who had access to the “cold wallet” of the exchange. This statement is absurd already because in no sane commercial structure the egg is placed in one basket. Because if they laid, then the most popular profession in the world would be the abduction of Fraer, who was entrusted with corporate eggs.
Break your finger to Fraer, find out passwords - et voila! - You have 190 million dollars in your pocket. Do you think that in this situation in Cambridge, a competition of applicants has been preserved?
Well, God be with him, with common sense. Listen to Cotten himself. In 2015, the now deceased CEO of Quadrigacx boasted in an interview with the impeccable security system of his native company (so slightly - the largest crypto -tanks Canada) and emphasized that all the main assets in the cryptocurrency are stored in the so -called Multi-Signature Cold Storage, cold purse with multi-signature. The meaning of the multi-signature is any operation with assets is possible only if it is certified by the N.T. The number of electronic signatures.
In other words, neither Kotten nor anyone else in the company could personally dispose of the cryptocurrency stored in the Quadrigacx wallet. Consensus was required, simultaneously confirming the transaction by several proxies.
As for the “living” money (dollars, etc.), all of them, according to the same cottage version of 2015, were stored in “Canadian financial organizations”, that is, in third -party banks.
By the way, about banks. In November 2018 (a month before the death of Cotten), Quadrigacx began litigation with one of the Canadian banks, which froze 19 million 600 thousand dollars on the bills belonging to the exchange, as it was desperate to identify real beneficiaries.
Well, the last touch: three days ago, a group of anonymous analysts studied blockchains, which reflected Quadrigacx transactions, and made curious conclusions:
The number of bitcoins under the control of the exchange is much less than the amount supposedly stored on the "cold wallets", which was announced by the widow of Cotten and which was confirmed by the leadership of Quadrigacx;
The exchange performed operations with bitcoins after the death of Kotten, which indirectly says that she did not lose access to her assets;
Blockchain data contradict the statement of Quadrigacx that she has nothing to pay for debts to customers.
Finally, the most entertaining conclusion from the analysis of blockchains:
- Quadrigacx used the funds of some customers to meet the requests of other customers to withdraw money.
Bingo! Further, in fact, you can not go anywhere and do not study anything. The reader, I believe, guessed what the last conclusion from the analysis of the blockchain means: Pi-ra-mi-yes!
The classic old, kind, reliable, well -established design named after Karl Petrovich Ponzi!
In the meantime, lawyers representing the interests of the exchange customers say that if they fail to find cottage passwords (someone wants to argue that it will not succeed?), Then Quadrigacx assets will leave the hammer.
True, it is not clear what assets we are talking about. The office whose address is indicated on the exchange portal-223-2055 Commercial Drive, Vancouver BC-does not exist in nature. And on Quadrigacx accounts 286 thousand dollars. It remains to wish good luck to lawyers and their customers in the noble business of the return of the missing 190 million.
Now - about how to save pants in the world of virtual finance. There are two answers that depend on how you are going to use your crypto -saving.
If you consider cryptocurrency as a means of payment when concluding transactions and goods (actually, this is the only way to consider it), then there are no problems: keep the crypt on those very “cold wallets” - on the Internet (Myetherwallet and Metamask), on the mobile device (JAXX, COINOMI, Mycelium, BREAD), on personal Computer (Exodus, Atomic Wallet, Bitcoin Core), and ideally, on a specialized medium (the so-called hardware color Wallet, like Trezor Model T, Keepkey, Bitfi DMA-2 or Ledger Nano S).
If the cryptocurrency for you is a toy for exchange speculations (naive and pernicious error), then with the current system of the organization of trading today it is difficult, although it is possible.
The fact is that for the sake of ensuring a warranty on transactions, modern crypto -rhins require that customers (both buyers and sellers) deposit pledges on the accounts of the exchange itself. As a rule, we are talking about a wallet belonging to the exchange (exactly the case of Quadrigacx).
And here everything can happen. Exchange is periodically subjected to attackers of hackers who steal from “hot wallets” (those connected to the Internet) cryptocurrency for tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
Someone may suddenly die in India. Finally, Chihuahua also want to eat delicious Yakanubo.
A universal recommendation: if you certainly want to plunge into a fashionable financial Eldorado and at the same time stay with your pants, react to your whim of an adult way. And therefore: thoroughly study to the smallest details all comparative ratings of the reliability of trading platforms and exchange portals; Consider a microscope petit in client agreements; Learn in advance the rules for the input and withdrawal of funds. Well, do not believe, of course, to fairy tales about “cold wallets”.