$100 Million Short: QuadrigaCX Audit Can’t Account for 26K Missing Bitcoin

Ernst and Young (EY), the court-appointed monitor for QuadrigaCX, has finally provided blockchain addresses for the ailing crypto exchange’s cold, or offline, bitcoin wallets. And aside from $400,000 worth of bitcoin that was accidentally sent to the cold wallets in early February, they are empty, meaning $100 million of the cryptocurrency is still missing. EY released its third report on Quadriga late Friday, outlining the progress it has made since first being appointed monitor at the beginning of February. While certain details in the report were already public, such as EY’s progress getting third-party payment processors to transfer fiat holdings back to Quadriga, until now the audit firm had steadfastly refused to provide much information about its search for the exchange’s missing cryptocurrencies.To recap, Quadriga announced at the end of January that it owed its customers nearly $200 million in both cryptocurrencies and fiat, with crypto making up the bulk at around $137 million. These cryptocurrencies were inaccessible, the company said, as deceased founder and CEO Gerald Cotten reportedly kept the bulk of the exchange’s holdings in cold storage, and only he controlled the private keys to its accounts.