CoinDesk Live: 2019's Most Catastrophic Crypto Caper

04/27/20 • 43 min

In our CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition series, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our upcoming virtual conference on May 11-15.

In this episode, CoinDesk managing editor Zack Seward and business reporter Nikhilesh De speak with Magdalena Gronowska, who lost a couple thousand dollars when Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX imploded. She's now a member of the Official Committee of Affected Users and the Bankruptcy Board of Inspectors.

QuadrigaCX is one of the stories in crypto that'll end up getting made into a movie; there's been so many twists and turns, and there still remains mystery, after the exchange's CEO, Gerald Cotten, unexpectedly died (although some believe he faked his death) on a trip to India in late 2018. He was supposedly the only person that held the keys to some $190 million in user funds – a pile of money that has been in dispute ever since. But once Canadian authorities started their investigation, it became clear that Cotten had also mismanaged client funds in many, many ways.

It's been a little over a year since Cotten's death was reported, setting off a whirlwind investigation, and Gronowska gives insight into where the case stands today.

Topics include:

How much it sucks to lose bitcoin when you're trying to stack sats.
How the Committee of Affected Users operates.
The role of the Bankruptcy Board of Inspectors.
The craziest thing QuadrigaCX's now-deceased CEO Gerald Cotten bought with his ill-gotten gains.
Would you rather be a MtGox creditor or QuadrigaCX creditor?
NDAs: what the committee knows and doesn't know.
How the crypto community's sleuthing actually helps the case.
Brass-tacks questions from creditors.
Not your keys; not your coins.
Everyone's favorite: regulation. And the silver lining to the QuadrigaCX disaster: Canadians, both the crypto community and the government, thinking harder about crafting appropriate regulations.
Another industry where tech, maybe even blockchain tech, could be beneficial: Canada's insolvency system.
What happens next?
$40 million CAD has been retrieved. Where does that money go and how will they recover the rest?

Next up:

Sign up to join the next CoinDesk Live on Tuesday, April 28 with Carlos Acevedo, founder of the Crypto Community Project, which is dedicated to educating low-income communities on crypto and blockchain.Acevedo is also the director of sales and the regional lead for Latin America at Brave.

And then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where Acevedo will be speaking.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In our CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition series, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our upcoming virtual conference on May 11-15.

It's been a little over a year since Cotten's death was reported, setting off a whirlwind investigation, and Gronowska gives insight into where the case stands today.

Topics include:

How much it sucks to lose bitcoin when you're trying to stack sats.
How the Committee of Affected Users operates.
The role of the Bankruptcy Board of Inspectors.
The craziest thing QuadrigaCX's now-deceased CEO Gerald Cotten bought with his ill-gotten gains.
Would you rather be a MtGox creditor or QuadrigaCX creditor?
NDAs: what the committee knows and doesn't know.
How the crypto community's sleuthing actually helps the case.
Brass-tacks questions from creditors.
Not your keys; not your coins.
Everyone's favorite: regulation. And the silver lining to the QuadrigaCX disaster: Canadians, both the crypto community and the government, thinking harder about crafting appropriate regulations.
Another industry where tech, maybe even blockchain tech, could be beneficial: Canada's insolvency system.
What happens next?
$40 million CAD has been retrieved. Where does that money go and how will they recover the rest?

Next up:

And then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where Acevedo will be speaking.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Previous Episode

CoinDesk Live: How This 'Legal Wrapper' for DAOs Could Democratize Venture Capital

It's tough out there for a blockchain startup trying to raise money.

Not only has interest in crypto and blockchain projects tapered off some over the past year or so of declining coin prices, but traditional venture capital has pivoted to focus on funding businesses that in some way overlap with the new normal of lockdowns, remote work and public health crises.

But the blockchain space has proved itself innovative as it relates to sussing out hidden capital. (Remember the ICO boom? Doesn't that feel like a decade ago?)

In our livestream series reboot of CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our first virtual conference May 11-15.

In this episode, CoinDesk business editor Zack Seward speaks with Aaron Wright and Priyanka Desai of OpenLaw, a company that plans to launch a for-profit DAO next week. What does that even mean? Digging into the structure of this new limited liability autonomous organization, dubbed The LAO, is just one of the topics in this week's episode.

Next Episode

CoinDesk Live: Banking the Unbanked... How the Crypto Community Can Make a Big Impact

“Hodl” has become quite the rallying cry in the crypto industry today. But to boost adoption, that might be the wrong trend.

So says Carlos Acevedo, director of sales and the regional lead of Latin America for Brave, the crypto-powered web browser provider. In this episode of CoinDesk Live, hosted by Consensus organizer Stephanie Izquieta, Acevedo seemed to invoke the giving nature of early bitcoin enthusiasts such as Roger Ver, who would give away bitcoin to anyone and everyone he met.

According to Acevedo, that's the best way to get more people interested in the technology. They’ll not only be interested from a price perspective but become more curious about how crypto could offer efficiencies and benefits in other areas of their life.

For people in lower-income communities that are unbanked or underbanked, it’s introducing a whole new concept of finance they didn’t have access to before.

"The movement is so small but so, so powerful," Acevedo says.

Listen in to hear more about:

Acevedo's work building the Crypto Community Project in the Bronx (N.Y.) and his broader crusade to help the unbanked
What he learned what interests students during his time as a teacher
The missing topic in young people's education about money - personal finance
What has the largest impact on a person's scholastic success?
How to use Brave and its Basic Attention Token (BAT)
Monetizing your attention
The Brave web browser and, specifically, its crypto rewards functionality as a gateway drug for going further down the blockchain rabbit hole
How crypto could help push people out of poverty
The fork that allows you to use Brave just like Google Chrome; why would you ever go back to using data-extracting search engines?
Crypto stimulus

Next up:

Join the next CoinDesk Live videocast on Thursday, April 30, with our guest Hudson Jameson, Ethereum developer liaison and DevOps engineer, who will be speaking about the second-largest blockchain's roadmap, plus countering the FUD.

Then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where all the guests you hear on CoinDesk LIVE will be speaking in more depth.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.