Gerald Cotten, CEO and co-founder of QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn’s disease Dec. 9 while
traveling in India to set up an orphanage, the firm wrote Jan. 14 on Facebook.
In a filing Thursday for
creditor protection with the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Jennifer Robertson, Cotten’s widow, said his death left the company unable to access the bulk of its crypto-currency funds, CBC News reported.
The filing says Cotten had the only password to so-called “cold storage” accounts, a form of savings, containing bitcoins deposited by 115,000 investors, CoinDesk reported.
He apparently left no record of the password, and security experts consulted by QuadrigaCX have been unable to crack the accounts, according to the publication. The filing seeks legal protection from investors while it tries to retrieve the bitcoins.