QuadrigaCX collapse — what creditors were owed and recovered (2019)

Quadriga's platform went offline on 28 January 2019, weeks after the company announced that founder and sole key-holder Gerald Cotten had died in India on 9 December 2018. Crypto withdrawals had already been failing, and fiat withdrawals had been impaired since early 2018 when a bank froze about 28 million Canadian dollars.

Quadriga Fintech Solutions, Whiteside Capital and 0984750 B.C. Ltd. applied for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on 31 January 2019; the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia granted an initial order on 5 February 2019 with Ernst and Young as monitor. Ernst and Young later recommended conversion, a bankruptcy transition order was issued on 11 April 2019, and the companies were assigned into bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act on 15 April 2019 with Ernst and Young as trustee.

Figures differ by source. Ernst and Young's early filings showed roughly 215.7 million Canadian dollars owed against about 28 million in assets, reported at the time as owing 160 million US dollars against 21 million found. Proven claims later totalled 303.1 million Canadian dollars, about 222.3 million US dollars, from 17,648 claimants. The Ontario Securities Commission counted about 76,000 affected clients losing at least 169 million dollars.

Ernst and Young recovered roughly 30 million dollars from Cotten's estate, a settlement with his widow, and Crypto Capital Corp. A first interim dividend of 13 cents on the dollar was declared in March 2023.