Laptop likely holds the key to missing crypto millions
HALIFAX — In an office in Toronto, there’s a laptop that could contain the keys to unlock $180 million in digital assets — virtual money possibly lost after the recent death of the whiz kid who founded one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
Gerald Cotten, a 30-year-old Nova Scotia resident and CEO of Quadriga CX, was travelling in India Dec. 9 when he died suddenly. His widow, Jennifer Robertson, has said Cotten was the only person with access to the laptop and the digital keys to the so-called cold wallets that are believed to hold the missing Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.
Experts in the cryptocurrency industry say there’s a slim chance technicians will be able to recover the currency. About 115,000 platform users are owed $180 million in cryptocurrency and another $70 million in cash.
Manie Eagar, CEO of Vancouver-based Digital-Futures, said Cotten’s computer is probably protected by some form of digital security, but that barrier could be overcome with the right tools. “Once they get into the laptop, they have a chance,” says Eagar, founding member of the former Bitcoin Alliance of Canada. “He must have written it down. In this case, it sounds like he did everything on his laptop.”
Alfred Lehar, a finance professor at the University of Calgary, said the big question is whether Cotten’s laptop actually contains the wallet keys.
“The money is there and everybody can see it, but nobody can access it without the private key,” says Lehar, an expert in risk management and financial institutions at the Haskayne School of Business.
If there are no keys, the cryptocurrency will be locked away for good.
“There’s no way to hack into that [wallet] using the computational methods we have today,” Lehar says. “It’s impossible.”
The key is typically a long, randomly generated sequence of numbers and letters. Using a powerful computer to guess at that combination would be futile.
“The number of possibilities is like counting the atoms of the universe,” Lehar says. “Since the universe is very big, there’s infinitely many opportunities for that number. The money is essentially gone. It’s there, but nobody can access it.”
Even if someone else had a key, it’s unlikely they would be able to empty the wallet and deposit the crypto-coins somewhere else, Lehar said.
“Any reputable crypto-exchange would not take that money. It would be obvious that it came from the account in question.”
The blockchain technology used to track cryptocurrencies, which is akin to an open ledger that is updated with every transaction, will make it difficult — but not impossible — to launder the coins, he said.
On Tuesday, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court granted Quadriga-CX protection from its creditors and a 30-day stay of proceedings. Quadriga-CX and its affiliated companies are registered in B.C., but it has no offices, bank accounts and employees, aside from a handful of well-paid contractors.