Funds Were Moving From QuadrigaCX Right Before Its Collapse

Nearly $1 million worth of ether left QuadrigaCX and went to other cryptocurrency exchanges in December, the same month its CEO died, a CoinDesk review of public blockchain data shows.

In a series of transactions sent from QuadrigaCX's hot wallet, more than 9,000 ETH moved from the embattled Canadian exchange to accounts at Binance, Bitfinex, Kraken and Poloniex.

According to Taylor Monahan, founder and CEO of the wallet startup MyCrypto, this wallet is probably a certain user's deposit account for another exchange, Bitfinex, since funds were regularly put into this wallet from QuadrigaCX addresses and then sent to Bitfinex.

"In most exchanges, you send funds to this account, it is automatically recorded in the exchange's database, that amount shows up on the balances/dashboard of your exchange account, and the funds are moved from your 'personal deposit address' to the exchange's 'main' or 'hot' wallet."

That received funds from the original QuadrigaCX address is identified as the exchange's hot wallet in the court filings.

It's hard to tell if the wallet sending ETH to the Binance deposit address was controlled by QuadrigaCX or belonged to a client who would send ETH from one exchange to the other.

Overall, during the entire month of December, more than 4,550 ETH were sent from QuadrigaCX to Binance, 2,400 ETH to Poloniex, 1,609 ETH to Bitfinex and 883 ETH to Kraken.

"If you have a strained relationship with your banking partners, you may choose to obtain fiat via another mechanism. So it wouldn't surprise me if an exchange used an desk or another exchange in the space in order to move ETH or BTC into fiat and ultimately pay bills."

In the normal course of business, Cotten "Would move the majority of the coins to cold storage," she wrote, adding that he held "Sole responsibility for handling the funds and coins," and the remaining team members have had no luck accessing the exchange's cold wallets since.

All told, the analysis of QuadrigaCX's ether wallets doesn't look optimistic for the users who have their funds stuck on the exchange, with cryptos bleeding in the direction of other exchanges.