That's ancient history by current standards. Ernst and Young, a Big Four auditor, is acting as the company's bankruptcy trustee and has spent much of the last 3+ years investigating Quadriga, trying to find the company's assets and recover what funds it could. The Canada Revenue Agency is also digging into Quadriga, checking on taxes the exchange may not have filed when it was operating.
Early on, in February 2019, EY revealed it had accidentally sent over 100 bitcoin (BTC) to what it described as Quadriga's cold wallets, which it could not access.
Last Friday, someone pulled all 104 BTC out. And promptly moved at least 70 or so of that to Wasabi Wallet, a privacy service. EY confirmed it wasn't anyone on the auditor's team, implying someone has either had access to these wallets for the last four years or someone found the keys after nearly four years. Either way, it's yet another blow to the crypto exchange, which is still going through its bankruptcy proceedings.
Crypto analytics firm Chainalysis said the movements are similar to bitcoin that left defunct trading service BTC-e's wallets a few weeks ago.
This is obviously not great news. EY and Miller Thomson, the law firm representing Quadriga creditors, did not return requests for comment earlier this week. In nearly identical statements, the two firms said they were investigating the "unauthorized transactions."
A number of questions will have to be answered. Why did EY believe the addresses in question were cold wallets, and what work have they done over the past four years to try and verify that they couldn't find the keys?
Furthermore, the case at this point appears to be held up largely by the Canada Revenue Agency, but EY hasn't published any reports on the bankruptcy case since January 2021, and its last notice to creditors was in February 2021. Crypto prices have changed dramatically since then, so it's unclear what exactly creditors will recover.
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