More bitcoin meshugas

I’ve been keeping a rather jaundiced eye on the bitcoin phenomenon since shortly after it first became a thing. Now, as then, I believe that at some point cryptocurrency will be widely adopted. But that it be governed by some sort of world bank-ish type of entity, not by a bunch of private investors and fanboys who seem like they ought to be celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day, not ruling the international monetary system.

To me, crypto has always been a weird little world, and it’s just gotten even weirder.

It began with the death – or, as many articles term it, the “alleged” death – of one Gerald Cotten. Cotten was/is the founder of Quadriga, a Canadian crypto exchange.

Cotten supposedly took the keys to his crypto kingdom (i.e., the passwords) with him, and now, no one can get into the digital ledgers kept on his encrypted laptop. To the tune of coins worth $144M.

Not a terribly major amount of money – certainly not enough to upset the crypto applecart, as there’s estimated to be about $400B of it floating or not floating around out there.

Still, $144M is plenty of money if you’re one of the Quadriga account holders who had a piece of what was stored in Cotten’s “cold wallet” (off the Internet and stored on impregnable hardware).

Anyway, since Cotten’s (alleged) death in December, sleuths have been trying to figure out what’s in his wallets. And what they’re finding is that those wallets were nearly empty.

So where’d the dough go?

Ernst & Young has been trying their damnedest to get to the bottom of things, but so far they’ve only found about 10% of the missing coins.

And now the G-men and the Mounties have gotten in on the act:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are said to be looking into the implosion of Quadriga, a cryptocurrency exchange that has been unable to account for at least $136 million in customer funds since the mysterious death of its 30-year-old CEO in December. (Source: Fortune)

Some maintain that the money was never in a cold wallet to begin with, but is circulating in hot wallets (on the Internet, somewhat traceable). But where is it?

This isn’t the first flakiness that Quadriga has been involved in. Among other oddities of a suspicious nature, Cotten’s co-founder is a felon who’d been convicted of identity theft, and has been tied to money laundering as well.

Anyway, I’m sure the Feds and the Mounties will figure out where the real-fake-money went. And maybe even whether Cotten has actually died. (There is no evidence that he’s alive, but the evidence that he died – which occurred in India, where (allegedly) it’s easy enough to fake a death – is a bit sketchy.)

Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping my actual, concrete money in actual, concrete financial institutions where it belongs. Personally, I’d stuff my money in my mattress before I’d invest in cryptocurrency.