QuadrigaCX trader put thousands on exchange hours before shutdown

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QuadrigaCX creditor stories are all bound to be sad, upsetting or frustrating. Few might be able to top the story of Bill Tsao, a Toronto-based trader who tried to get in one last trade before things went haywire.

MarketWatch reported on his story. According to Tsao, “I needed the cash so I just looked for the best price and thought this is the best place to sell. It was just over one hundred thousand dollars (US$74,800) to pay down some mortgage and cover some other personal items.”

He saw QuadrigaCX was offering the best rates on January 28, so he shifted his Bitcoin Core (BTC) over to the exchange and hit sell. Literally hours later, and well before a withdrawal could be processed, QuadrigaCX put up their maintenance page and never came back to operations.

“Literally the next day I woke up the website was down and I have no idea how to get in contact with them other than sending a package,” Tsao wrote on Reddit.

Considering the lack of funds QuadrigaCX still suffers from, it’s unlikely Tsao will get much of his money back. Not making matters any better for him, the Premier of Bermuda, David Burt, has argued that his country would have not let anything like that happen if the exchange was based there. Burt said in an interview with Fortune’s “Balancing the Ledger” show:

“If Quadriga was licensed under the Bermuda Monetary Authority, what has happened would not have been able to happen, because we have rules regarding the custody of master keys and making sure they’re not held by a particular individual.”

That provides a useful lesson for Canadian regulatory authorities, who are looking into how they can better protect the crypto industry in Canada from a similar shutdown occurring again. Sadly, though, that kind of bragging just further buries poor Mr. Tsao, who was simply looking for the best trading price, and ended up losing a whole lot of money.