Cryptocurrency Company Lost $137 Million
There's a company called QuadrigaCX from British Columbia, Canada. And they manage about $137 million worth of their customers' digital cryptocurrency assets.
According to Ars Technica / Gizmodo, basically, QuadrigaCX works like a stock market exchange, only with digital currencies like Bitcoin. People use real money to buy, sell, and trade those currencies on QuadrigaCX, and then the company stores the people's assets.
But the founder of the company just died, and that's bad news for all of QuadrigaCX's investors. Because he was the only person on the planet who knew the PASSWORD to the hard drive. So now nobody can access their money.
His widow just filed for bankruptcy protection for the company until they can try to figure out some other way to decrypt everything and get the money back.
Meanwhile, a lot of the users now think the entire thing was a scam and their money is long gone. And it wouldn't be a huge shock . . . QuadrigaCX had been investigated before for, quote, "irregularities."