Gerry was a very careful person who well understood the need to back up ones private keys. Their findings, though baroquely technical, could be distilled to a two-word conclusion: The initial portrait of Cotten that emerged in February 2018, once his death was announced through a Quadriga Facebook post, squared with the yacht salesmans impressions. He was a founder and the CEO of Quadriga, Canadas dominant Bitcoin exchangesomething like TD Ameritrade for cryptocurrency. Perklin said he has no evidence Cotten is still alive, however. A quadriga is a chariot yoked to four horses abreast. TalkGold was a Ponzi clearinghouse, where blind faith and curdled cynicism engaged in a demonic rumba. His death left investors locked out of their money and left Jennifer Robertson, Gerry's wife, to deal with the fallout. It'd be a form of closure for some people," said Small. It was the behavior of a doomed gambler employing the martingale strategy, successively doubling down in a desperate effort to get back to zero, until he had dug a hole so deep that he could only be buried inside it. Back in 2018, 30-year-old Cotten took a trip to India with his now widow Jennifer Robertson for their honeymoon and to open an orphanage. There was no such constraint on the outraged creditorsor the true believers who saw in Quadrigas collapse an existential threat to cryptocurrencys integrity at just the moment it had assumed an eggshell veneer of legitimacy. Jennifer Robertson, whose husband Gerald Cotten died aged 30 during their honeymoon in India in 2018, opened up about her ordeal in a new book, Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions. "Whenever people put their money into the exchange, he sort of used it as his personal slush fund," she said. Why did Robertson wait a month to notify investors of his death? The Walrus on Instagram: "Jennifer Robertson met her husband, Bitcoin We all want Bitcoin to succeed, and businesses in the Bitcoin industry to succeed, which encourages some level of self-delusion. "He also mentioned that the business would die without him," she said. Most of these early acolytes were drawn to the digital currencys libertarian ethos, its promises of decentralization, transparency, speed, and independence from governments and financial institutions. Gerald Cotten - WikiAlpha Gerry and Alex [Hanin, a web developer] created and ran Quadriga, with Gerry running operations.) By 2015, however, the same information that the TalkGold community had gleaned a decade earlier was starting to surface on Reddit: that Michael Patryn was really Omar Dhanani, a convicted thief and defrauder with ties to organized crime. Its just completely out of their wheelhouse, says a Quadriga creditor and cryptocurrency expert who was interviewed after publishing his findings online under the moniker QCXINT. Cotten, it turned out, had transferred the funds into personal accounts on competitor exchanges. How Gerald Cotten, the "Crypto King," Really Died - Bustle Best Known As Gerald Cotten's Wife Jennifer Robertson's Husband Died On Their Honeymoon Cotten's Death Had The Crypto World In A Frenzy Has Disappeared From The Limelight Gerald Cotten was the founder of QuadrigaCX, once Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. It was then revealed that Gerry presumably happened to be the only person with access to the digital keys to the cold wallets that held the cryptocurrency. She has co-authored a book titled Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions that details her experiences with Gerry. If Quadriga was conceived as a scam, what kind of scam was it? Within months, things went from bad to worse for everyone involved. As the cryptocurrency soared in value, Robertson and Cotten lived a life of luxury that included exotic vacations, luxury vehicles, a yacht and a Cessna aircraft. Quadrigas entire board resigned, leaving Cotten as Quadrigas only full-time employee. "I did let that go to the lawyers and the contractors, and I trusted that they knew what to do," she said. No autopsy was requested. Is Gerald "Gerry" Cotten Really Dead? - magostolla.pakasak.com Its object was not to track down every lost Bitcoin but to maximize the pot of money that could be returned to Quadrigas creditors. Retrieved 18 January 2022. Gerald Cotten, a Nova Scotia resident originally from Ontario, was 30 years old when he died suddenly while travelling in India on Dec. 9 -- leaving his virtual company, QuadrigaCX, without access . His clients were locked out of about $250 million, and investigators later found widespread fraud. Still, the eulogies had a prismatic quality; viewed from an angle they suggested darker possibilities. There were other financial problems for Cotten, too: CIBC had frozen $26 millionof the company's funds because of "suspicious activity" and another $10 millionwas locked away by a software bug. From our perspective, we needed Quadriga, says Andrew Wagner, who at the time was the co-ops director of public relations. Cotten knew the catchphrases and the talking points, but he seemed most interested in Bitcoins speculative possibilities. Cotten may be hoping Robertson will join him once all the investigations have concluded, or she may be just another one of his victims. (Courtesy of Jennifer Robertson) The first thing. In the public narrative that emerged, derived largely from a meticulously detailed investigation by Canadas Globe and Mail, Cotten fell sick nine days into his Indian honeymoon, shortly after checking into the Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur on December 8, 2018. Everything was going well until the press released the news of his death. Jennifer stressed she had no knowledge of her husbands fraudulent activities and wondered why he did what he did. The brutal murders of four Idaho college students shocked millions. He used to crack jokes all the time. She froze and said something about having to shampoo her cats. In January 2014 Salkeld posted a video on YouTube in which Cotten gently teaches his young daughters how to operate the Bitcoin ATM; Salkeld is certain that his two-year-old is the youngest person ever to have purchased Bitcoin.
