Canadian Cryptocurrency owner "dies" ( or disappears) holding the only password to his clients $140M !

[Nirish guy]

So.......as reported below on the worldwide press this morning ......

A Canadian Bitcoin style cryptocurrency whizzkid has seemingly died ( or may have disappeared as some are suggesting with the one and ONLY password to all of his client's $140 million of digitally held money) and it seems our very own CDNMatt has dropped off the site again just as he went off to work on a "big project" eh.........I'm just saying like ...... ;-)


So, "C D M (M)"att ........perhaps short for "Canadian Digital Money Missing"...... well, he DID tell us that he was going to be very well off "soon" once his big project had paid out AND he said he'd be going to live very comfortably ( in hiding?) in some third world Country once he'd manage to buy his way in there with a dodgy business Visa to enable him to live with a harem of new boyfriends now didn't he ! OMG perhaps he was telling us all along eh and we were just too blind to see it .....smart guy eh ! :)


Cryptocurrency exchange founder's death locks $140m

Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange is unable to access millions in digital currency following the sudden death of its founder.

Quadriga has filed for creditor protection and estimates that about C$180m ($137m; £105m) in cryptocurrency coins is missing.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47123371

[cdnmatt]

No, I'm not like folks like bruce_nyc. I actually work for my money.

[Nirish guy]

Ohh Still here.........hmmm keeping up the cover eh, very smart, keeping a low profile until the dust settles and you can start blowing some of that $140m eh ! :-)

So and in all seriousness then :) ......so, what ( if anything) is the inside track on that particular case in the cyrpto world today then ?

Is it accepted that the guy really DID die without leaving the required password to anyone at all - especially as he knew he was already ill ?

Lets face it that sounds somewhat doubtful ( but not impossible I guess in that world) that that could even happen, especially when a business gets to that level of "turnover" ? surely and also surely that sort of business wouldn't just depend on ONE single password to enter his laptop to control everything - and even if so surely that password could be cracked by SOMEONE / the FBI etc anyway somehow given time ? OR is the feeling more that "no, he's more than likely just faked his own death and is away counting his good fortune elsewhere and somewhere warm with other peoples money already perhaps ??

[cdnmatt]

Well, the part of the one password is technically true. Most likely, they're talking about a BIP32 private key, which looks something like this:

xprv9wfNNZbY13yuzpXqFRFeyyvUw2Uzn73F5hAjoxfNPbbFtW HoMiC65kpPNht78L7VVtmHnkdSD3Zn1Gh59dnUdtVcUY5nbV43 LQocTqSDB5h

You can't just crack a password / key that long. If you lose that, then you simply lose access to all your funds, so that part is true.

Realistically though, I highly doubt it. I'm not sure about the legalities, but I do know Canadian parliament passed laws to regular exchanges like this a bit. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it was totally illegal for the CEO to horde the private key like that and not provide access to it to the board of directors of that compnay.

I never really did any business with that exchange itself, but that exchange was previously cavirtex.com, and I did do business with them. I can't quite remember, but I do remember problems / headaches with them, and the CEO was a shady character.

My guess is due to CoinSquare expanding rapidly in Canada and taken a good portion of the market share, this guy seen the writing on the wall that the demise of his company was near, so did a runner.

[latintopxxx]

cdnmatt...I love u...u r the best ever...always been a great fan of u and your superior intelligence and witty posts.

[cdnmatt]

Lay off the drugs, latin.

[Nirish guy]

they're talking about a BIP32 private key, which looks something like this: prv9wfNNZbY13yuzpXqFRFeyyvUw2Uzn73F5hAjoxfNPbbFtWH oMiC65kpPNht78L7VVtmHnkdSD3Zn1Gh59dnUdtVcUY5nbV43L QocTqSDB5h .

What a nightmare of a password ! And to think that I get frustrated and compain when the likes of booking. com INSIST that I have to use a capital letter in my password ! :-)

[cdnmatt]

Well, it all depends on how their software system is setup, but ultimately, a key such as that is required to send any funds across the bitcoin network.

Lots of times the user will never actually even see that key. Instead, they just choose a wallet password whatever they would like, then when the software generates a key like that, it will encrypt it via AES256 / AES512 using the wallet password. Then when a user wants to send funds, they just need to enter their wallet password, and it will decrypt the private key, so the user never actually has to handle the BIP32 key-pair itself.


Who knows how their system is setup, but regardless, yes losing one password / key is enough to lose $140m. That's why I think he did a runner instead of died, because no decent businessman would be stupid enough to have the only key / access to that much money. I'm guessing that was intentional, and he had been planning this for a while.

[Nirish guy]

Well if he didn't die he'd better be good at hiding as I'm guessing that some of his now ex-customers WILL ensure that he IS a dead man if they can ever catch up with him - and I'm guessing even WITH all that money it / he will be findable "somehow" to those in the know - and in THAT world I'm guessing there's enough shady characters to find you no matter WHERE you try and hide !

[cdnmatt]

Who knows, maybe the Russians found him and made him "accidentally" die. :)

[frequent]

Who knows, maybe the Russians found him and made him "accidentally" die. :)All these cryptocurrencies are beloved of the Mafia, blackmailers, kidnappers, drug-dealers and high-class prostitutes so frankly anything is possible

[cdnmatt]

Exactly what I said. $140m of anonymous and untraceable money is probably pretty attractive to folks like the Russian magia, or who knows, maybe some Saudis like good ole MBS.

[frequent]

Exactly what I said. $140m of anonymous and untraceable money is probably pretty attractive to folks like the Russian magia, or who knows, maybe some Saudis like good ole MBS.How is your Bitcoin treasure trove these days Matt? Still promoting the cryptocurrencies scam?

[cdnmatt]

Hoe many more years does it have to keep going for before you decide it's legit form of money transfer?

It's only been 10 years now, and it's still going strong, so maybe you need another 5 years or so?

[frequent]

Hoe many more years does it have to keep going for before you decide it's legit form of money transfer?It's only been 10 years now, and it's still going strong, so maybe you need another 5 years or so?A money transfer is converting from (say) Canadian dollars to Thai baht. I don't need some sort of intermediary store of fluctuating value to do that; Transferwise does it instantaneously. There's no need to go and buy Bitcoin with my dollars and then sell Bitcoin so as to buy baht

[cdnmatt]

Problem. TransferWise doesn't work for Laos Kip.

[frequent]

Problem. TransferWise doesn't work for Laos Kip.What's your solution Matt? Buy Bitcoin with your Canadian dollars and then sell your Bitcoin to someone who will give you Lao kip for it? Only the True Believer would see that as a least-friction solution

Here's the Transferwise link about the Lao kip - https://transferwise.com/au/currency-converter/currencies/lak-laotian-kip

Perhaps you could enlighten us with the total transaction costs for such an act of lunacy

[bkkguy]

You can't just crack a password / key that long.

and if he is already dead then the classic xkcd solution (https://xkcd.com/538/) is no longer an option!


Hoe many more years does it have to keep going for before you decide it's legit form of money transfer?

It's only been 10 years now, and it's still going strong, so maybe you need another 5 years or so?

really? last I read after the last fall the market valuation of a Bitcoin is now lower than the cost of mining one for most people (it depends on your electricity price) and without major changes to the underlying software there is no way it can scale to handle the volume of transactions that even minor payment systems cope with effortlessly - yes I know there are groups currently working to address these and other issues but the solutions will not be incorporated back into Bitcoin

and it seems even blockchain no longer has the flavour of the month status it once enjoyed

[cdnmatt]

Unless someone else has the key, and they're not telling, those funds are gone. I guess with the advent of quantum computing you may be able to get the funds back, but that's still very unlikely. If that key is gone, not even the NSA has the resources to get those funds back.

I can't remember how many times I've heard, "that's it, bitcoin is dead, pack your bags boys", and bitcoin is still humming along just fine. Worst case scenario, miners collectively decide to hike their fees, and we end up paying say $2.00 to send funds instead of $0.10. It will piss off all the people flooding the network with $0.15 transactions, but hardly the end of the world.

Network capacity is decent at ~7 TPS, but I guess could use some improvement. Please note, bitcoin was never designed for a bunch of $2 purchases. It's kind of morphed into that due to user demand, but that was never the intended purpose / design.

And I have no idea why the blockchain concept ever got so much attention, and glad that's over. For a good while there you had loads of people and companies saying this is the future, and the blockchain "technology" is going to change all aspects of society. We're going to begin putting property titles, car leases, wills, airline bookings, and everything else on the blockchain. Anyone who spouted that nonsense simply doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, because that's simply not how it works.

Bitcoin is a transactional network with a very specific format, and you can't just start shoving large documents into the blockchain. The protocol was modified years ago, and I think you're now allowed to add 60 bytes of arbitrary data to a transaction, but that's it. That's enough for a small CRC32, MD5 or SHA1 hash, and I guess you could use that to match up with records in the provider's database, but that's about it. And there's so many potential problems and issues with that scenario, that's why you've never seen concepts like that really gain any momentum.

[frequent]

Please note, bitcoin was never designed for a bunch of $2 purchases. It's kind of morphed into that due to user demand, but that was never the intended purpose / design.Oh dear. How should I send 17,130 Kip then?

[frequent]

The thing about the blockchain - favoured by the Mafia, pornographers, blackmailers and so forth - is that everyone has to agree before anything can be deleted - https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/02/someone-uploaded-child-pornography-to-a-blockchain-ledger-and-its-almost-impossible-to-delete/

Its proponents claim a strength is that it’s outside the norms of the nation state. Indeed it is

[cdnmatt]

What are you talking about? Nothing can be deleted from the blockchain. It's impossible, as that's just not how it works.

Same kind of thing as if you e-mail a dick pic to 100,000 people, there's nothing you can do to make that dick pic disappear.
n

[frequent]

What are you talking about? Nothing can be deleted from the blockchain. It's impossible, as that's just not how it works.I'm still waiting for your advice on how I send Kip using Bltcoin

[cdnmatt]

I love how you do this. When proven irrevocably wrong, instead of acknowledging that, you decide to be an antagonist instead. Good stuff.
n

[frequent]

I love how you do this. When proven irrevocably wrong, instead of acknowledging that, you decide to be an antagonist instead. I've merely asked you to demonstrate how to use Bitcoin to send Kip to Laos. Is that beyond you?

[frequent]

I love how you do this. When proven irrevocably wrong, instead of acknowledging that, you decide to be an antagonist instead. Yes, you're absolutely correct Matt - if a single person refuses to delete something from their Blockchain register it will remain forever in everyone's Blockchain register even if everyone else has agreed it is spurious and should be deleted. Of course - as some people have found to their detriment - if a transaction isn't registered in every blockchain register it doesn't really exist - see this link https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-transactions-on-blockchain-be-deleted-given-that-it-is-just-an-electronic-storage

Happy now?

[cdnmatt]

You don't understand how this works.

Yes, when a new transactions hits the network, it can disappear. This can happen for a multitude of reasons, such as invalid format, too low of a fee for miners to care about, too much change provided, etc.

If everything is legit though, then multiple miners across the globe will go ahead and pick up that transaction and confirm it. When ever one of those miners confirms the next block, that transaction then gets added into the blockchain forever.

Once a block is solved / confirmed though, there is no deleting its contents, and it's there forever as it gets spread around the globe to probably hundreds of thousands of computers / serveres within seconds.

[frequent]

Yes, when a new transactions hits the network, it can disappear. This can happen for a multitude of reasons, such as invalid format, too low of a fee for miners to care about, too much change provided, etc.Excellent. Now you've got that off your chest, how do I use Bitcoin to send Kip?

[cdnmatt]

You don't send Kip with bitcoin. You send bitcoin with bitcoin.

If you want to flip bitcoin into Kip, you just find an intermediary. These are all over the place.

[frequent]

You don't send Kip with bitcoin. You send bitcoin with bitcoin. If you want to flip bitcoin into Kip, you just find an intermediary. These are all over the place.Right so to revert to my earlier question, as I don't have any Bitcoin I need to buy some using my Canadian dollars and then I need to sell (or as you say "flip") my Bitcoin into Kip. How much "friction" is there in that set of transactions? This by the way is your recommendation - we use Bitcoin to send someone foreign currency? You'll be familiar with the concept of friction of course, but for those who are not, "Friction includes both monetary and non-monetary costs, associated with the relative difficulty of conducting a transaction" - https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/friction

Just off the top of my head there's

the cost of acquiring the Bitcoin with the usual Buy/Sell spread in Canadian dollars
the cost of selling the Bitcoin, again with the usual Buy/Sell spread into Lao Kip
the opportunity cost in the risk that the price of Bitcoin might fall between me acquiring it and me selling it
the need to involve a third-party broker - your "intermediary" - (who may go bust etc. - the title of this thread basically) who presumably is making his money on the Buy/Sell spread to acquire the Bitcoin
the transaction cost of transmitting or otherwise handling Canadian dollars to pay said broker
the need to involve a third-party broker - your "intermediary" (the same one or another one??) - (who may go bust etc. - the title of this thread basically) who presumably is making his money on the Buy/Sell spread to sell the Bitcoin
the transaction cost of receiving or otherwise handling Lao Yip from said broker

Have I left anything out?

[cdnmatt]

Yes, in your position it would probably suck.

I get paid in bitcoin though, and pay various services and contractors in bitcoin, so obviously that alleviates forex fees, as there isn't any. Then when I flip it over to fiat, sure there's a nominal fee of maybe 1.5% or so, all depending on who I find to act as an intermediary, but it's not that bad.

[frequent]

I get paid in bitcoin though, and pay various services and contractors in bitcoin, so obviously that alleviates forex fees, as there isn't any. Then when I flip it over to fiat, sure there's a nominal fee of maybe 1.5% or so, all depending on who I find to act as an intermediary, but it's not that bad.Previously you have asserted that Bitcoin is a legitimate way to manage foreign exchange. Now you're saying it's only of practical benefit if you're already part of the Bitcoin ecosystem otherwise the multiplicity of transaction costs make the friction too onerous

[cdnmatt]

No, I remember specifically telling NIrish once that bitcoin probably wouldn't be good for him, as it doesn't make much sense to buy bitcoin, then flip it over into THB for example.

Now if you get paid in bitcoin, it's obviously a different story.

[frequent]

No, I remember specifically telling NIrish once that bitcoin probably wouldn't be good for him, as it doesn't make much sense to buy bitcoin, then flip it over into THB for example. Now if you get paid in bitcoin, it's obviously a different story.
Read your own post #14 in this very thread where you laud Bitcoin as a medium for currency transfers

[cdnmatt]

Well, for me personally, it's excellent for currency transfers. For example, I get paid in bitcoin one day, and within an hour without leaving home I can:

- Pay a couple contractors out in bitcoin
- Pay my web hosting bill, and register a couple domains (in bitcoin)
- Deposit some funds into my Canadian bank account
- Deposit funds into other people's bank accounts in say Thailand and Germany if needed
- Transfer funds to my AdvCash ATM card, which I can then use anywhere in the world naturally.
- Send a Western Union transfer to someone

And I never have to worry about things like my account getting frozen, or having to call customer support because my account was red flagged for some reason, or anything like that. There is no central authority I have to ensure to please, and it's no problem at all finding intermediaries to help facilitate the transactions, as they are plentiful and in virtually every country in the world.

[frequent]

Well, for me personally, it's excellent for currency transfers. Since you a part of the Bitcoin ecosystem it makes sense to you, but the majority of people live outside the scam and it makes absolutely no sense to them. Like all religious converts (and Bitcoin has most of the characteristics of a religion) you are obsessed with forever justifying your beliefs while at the same time proselytising others vigorously

[Smiles]

"... I never have to worry about things like my account getting frozen, or having to call customer support because my account was red flagged for some reason, or anything like that. There is no central authority I have to ensure to please, and it's no problem at all finding intermediaries to help facilitate the transactions, as they are plentiful and in virtually every country in the world ... "
Strange that, because I've been a regular customer of a well-thought-of Canadian Bank for near on 60 years now and not once have I come across anything approaching your self-described list of paranoia(s).
Though on the other hand I'm not living my life either at my mother's house, nor constantly just a few steps ahead of the RCMP, the CRA, Thailand Immigration, a couple of pissed off dogs, and the Lao Jailers and their 'coming-for-you' low paid bad attitude (many others I assume).

[cdnmatt]

Smiles, quit being so cheerful all the time! :)

[Nirish guy]

As an update to the above interesting to see now ( and as predicted above) they have now accessed the "dead" guys digital wallets only to find them totally EMPTY !! They also state that it seems that he was also using 14 other secret accounts to move money about.

However IF they guy IS actually dead ( and medically proven etc) then that of course leaves the next question as to WHO it was then that emptied out the wallets in the first place as apparently that was completed several weeks and months before his death !

I'm guessing that this is a story that has far to run yet.......and surely is yet another example of why using digital currencies may not be such a smart idea for the holding your life savings ( or any other sort for that matter!) !?

Update to main story from the BBC....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47454528