Have you ever heard of Gerald Cotten? Because if you don’t know this story, you’re missing out on one of the most absurd mysteries in the crypto world.

It was late 2018 when this guy, CEO of QuadrigaCX (one of the leading Canadian exchanges), decided to go on his honeymoon in India with his wife. Thirty-three years old, charismatic, founder of an exchange handling millions. Everything seemed perfect. Then on December 9th, he died in a hospital in Jaipur due to complications related to Crohn’s disease. Tragedy, period.

But wait. A few days after his death, the exchange completely collapses. And here emerges the detail that drives everyone crazy: Cotten was the only — literally the only — with access to the cold wallets where over $250 million in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were stored. Belonging to 115,000 clients. Without backups. Without shared passwords. Nothing.

Do you see where I’m going? The crypto community started asking tough questions. Investigators discovered that Gerald had made strange movements between wallets before dying, that the hospital where he died was private, that the death certificate had strange gaps. And so people began to wonder: what if Cotten wasn’t really dead? What if it was all a setup?

Devastated clients requested an exhumation of the body. Experts suggested that maybe he had used mixers and tax havens to hide the funds. Netflix made a documentary that leaves the question hanging: where is the money? Where is Gerald Cotten really?

Today QuadrigaCX is practically a monument to disaster. It reminds you that in crypto, a single individual can be the central bank, the safe, and the potential thief all at once. There’s no redundancy, no protection, nothing. Just trust. And when that trust disappears — when the man disappears — only holes and unanswered questions remain.