Crypto chaos: From Vancouver to Halifax, tracing the mystery of Quadriga’s missing millions

By Joe Castaldo, Alexandra Posadzki, Jessica Leeder and Lindsay Jones

The registered office of 700964 NB Inc. is a rundown, vinyl-sided trailer in rural New Brunswick. Most of the mobile homes here in a community in Quispamsis, a suburb of Saint John overlooking the tail end of the Appalachian Mountains, are tidy abodes with affable residents. A slim young man with scruff on his face sits on the porch and drags from a cigarette, next to a bowl nearly overflowing with butts. A security camera mounted on the wall points at the front door, red light glowing.

This home is one of the few physical traces of Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp., which operated a virtual exchange known as QuadrigaCX that allowed people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Registered in New Brunswick in February, 2018, 700964 NB is part of a network of entities that helped move millions of dollars around so Quadriga could take deposits and facilitate withdrawals, sometimes in the form of physical bank drafts, for its clients.

The unusual way it conducted business has now been painfully exposed for all 115,000 of its users. The company was granted creditor protection on Tuesday in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia after its founder, Gerald Cotten, died suddenly at the age of 30. Mr. Cotten left behind a company in shambles. Quadriga’s users, unable to withdraw their funds, are collectively owed $250-million.

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Published by the Globe and Mail.