Have you ever heard of Gerald Cotten and what happened with Quadriga?

It is one of the most fascinating and disturbing mysteries in the history of cryptocurrencies, and honestly, it deserves more attention than it gets.

For those who don't know, Gerald Cotten was the founder of QuadrigaCX, one of Canada's leading exchanges.
In 2019, when the exchange started having withdrawal issues, something extraordinary emerged: Cotten had died in India shortly before, and apparently, he was the only person who knew the passwords to the wallets containing users' funds.
Thousands of clients found themselves locked out, unable to access their assets.

What makes Gerald Cotten's case even stranger is that it has never been fully clarified whether he was truly dead, whether the funds were genuinely inaccessible, or if there was something more complex behind the scenes.
In the following years, various theories and investigations surfaced, but the mystery surrounding Cotten and Quadriga has never been completely resolved.

This case has taught the industry important lessons about security, transparency, and the risks of centralization.
Gerald Cotten's story remains a warning to anyone operating in the crypto world: the lack of redundancy in critical systems can lead to catastrophic consequences.

It's one of those cases you can't forget once you've studied it thoroughly.
What happened to Quadriga and Cotten continues to influence how we think about exchange security even today.