A cryptocurrency exchange company has said it cannot repay £110m to its clients because the founder died and was the only one with access to the required passwords.
QuadrigaCX’s, Canada’s leading cryptocurrency exchange company, has been unable to access funds since Gerald Cotten died.
The 30-year-old had died “due to complications with Crohn’s disease” while travelling in India to open an orphanage in December.
Mr Cotten’s responsibility was to handle funds and coins and no other members of the team had the access he did, CoinDesk reported.
Jennifer Robertson, who has been identified as Cotten’s widow in court documents, said the exchange owes its customers roughly C$250m (US$190m) in cash and cryptocurrency held in its “cold storage”.
Ms Robertson has access to her late husband’s laptop but does not know the password, she said.
A technical expert has also been brought in to try and access his laptop, but has been unable to bypass its encryption.
Customers of QuadrigaCX have been complaining on social media they have been umnable to withdraw money from their accounts.
A statement from the board said: "For the past weeks, we have worked extensively to address our liquidity issues, which include attempting to locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves held in cold wallets, and that are required to satisfy customer cryptocurrency balances on deposit, as well as sourcing a financial institution to accept the bank drafts that are to be transferred to us.
"Unfortunately, these efforts have not been successful."
