Quadriga CX

Founded in 2013 by Gerald Cotten and Michael Patryn, Quadriga CX grew to become Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The platform allowed users to trade Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum against Canadian and US dollars. The company's operations abruptly halted in January 2019 after the death of its CEO, Gerald Cotten, who was purportedly the only person with the private keys to the exchange's offline "cold wallets." Subsequent investigations by regulators and journalists revealed the company was a fraudulent enterprise, operating as a Ponzi scheme where Cotten had been misappropriating client funds for years to cover trading losses and finance a lavish lifestyle. The company declared bankruptcy in April 2019.