Examining the Possibilities of Quadrigacx Exchange Incident Was Not a Scam

The sudden death of Gerald Cotton, the CEO of QuadrigaCX, Canadians first cryptocurrency exchange threw the crypto world into a huge frenzy, a situation seen by many crypto analysts as unhealthy for the already bearish crypto market. Up until Cotton’s death in December 2018, QuadrigaCX, A Vancouver based centralized cryptocurrency exchange remained the most formidable cryptocurrency exchange in Canada which according to the Wikipedia serves as much as 115,000 customers. The Quadriga incident has begged the question of whether this can turn out to be another grand scam as prevalent in the cryptosphere.

Emergence Of QuadrigaCX

Quadriga started in November 2013, doing only local trades. QuadrigaCX was launched in December 2013 and is largely known as the first Canadian Exchange to be licensed by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). In January 2014, QuadrigaCX installed the second Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver. Gerald Cotton became the director when other directors resigned in 2016.

Previous Anomalies In operation

As with many other exchanges, QuadrigaCX has had its fair share of instability in its operations since its inception, the company made a declaration in June 2014 that they lost $14 million worth of Ethereum attributed to a smart contract error. Many QuadrigaCX customers experienced payment irregularities in 2018, a problem the company blamed on most Canadian banks.

The company was further discovered not to have a bank account and the business was run from home on Cotton’s encrypted laptop with all the customer's private keys which he alone had access to. As of the time of this writing, the Website of QuadrigaCX has been put offline due to an independent investigation by Ernst and Young on the lock assets valued at over $140 million.

The Unsaid Truths

Even in the face of these irregularities and the fear that has gripped most QuadrigaCX customers especially those with a substantial amount of investment on the platform, QuadrigaCX has played a significant role in stabilizing the presence of bitcoin and Altcoins in general in Canada.

Every business has its ups and downs and what makes a successful business is its ability to face challenges and wedge through it. As has been said, QuadrigaCX has over 115000 customers who trade with them. I believe Quadriga’s community grew partly because of their innovative and pioneering crypto strides and partly because of their integrity in payment made more possible by timely and informative pronouncements when things go wrong. In all these, QuadrigaCX has being found faithful.

In investing in cryptocurrencies, it is often advised to check out for the integrity of the project leaders. To those who have been speculating the possibilities of QuadrigaCX being a grand scam, I believe its possibly because they have no idea who the man Cotten was before his death. Michael Patryn, Cotten’s ex-business partner described Gerald Cotten as “a ray of Sunshine”, he admitted Cotten was like a brother to him. Patryn’s kind to an extent shows that Cotten is a man that gives hope and values relationships.

The position of these submissions is to put forth the fact that had Gerald Cotton not died, QuadrigaCX would have to be in business, and thus, the whole atmosphere of uncertainty would have not been ignited. I’d, therefore, agree with the school of thought that Gerald Cotten and his business is not fraud at least for his pioneering innovations in Canadian’s cryptocurrency space even if all market indices point to this conclusion