Tong Zhou May Return to BitTorrent After QuadrigaCX Takes His Life Savings

After working in the US for nearly a decade, Zhou was returning to Canada, the country of his birth. After learning about the attack on QuadrigaCX and complete loss of funds, Justin Sun offered the former BitTorrent employee a job.

Death and Cryptocurrency

Zhou’s funds never made it out of Quadriga. He has been waiting for four months to regain access to his life savings. Issues such as these were an early sign that the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange was collapsing even before the death of its founder Gerald Cotten on Dec 9, 2018. With Cotten’s death, the private keys needed to access the cold wallets where funds stored on Quadriga became impossible, as he was the only one who had access to them. The fiat and cryptocurrency held by Quadriga may be lost forever. If this is the case, amounts lost include:

• Approximately 70 million CAD
• Over 26,000 BTC
• Over 11,000 Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Over 35,000 Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
• Over 11,00 Bitcoin SV (BSV)
• Nearly 200,000 Litecoin (LTC)
• Over 400,000 Ethereum (ETH)

Permanent Losses?

Around 115,000 users including Zhou have been affected by QuadrigaCX’s financial woes. Zhou has asserted that he has suffered the worst due to this negligence. This may or may not be true. With approximately 250 million CAD lost in both fiat and cryptocurrency, it is possible that others suffered much larger losses than Zhou. There is, as of yet, no published list detailing specific amounts lost. On Feb 5, 2019, the Quadriga exchange received creditor protection for a thirty day period following a hearing by the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. During this period, the exchange alleges that it will attempt to settle customer financial obligations, however, without access to the cold wallets, it admits that this may be difficult or even impossible. If it is unable to settle these debts or extend creditor protection, the exchange may be forced to file for bankruptcy.

Back to BitTorrent?

Unlike the others affected by Quadriga, Zhou’s case has gotten the attention of Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT). Zhou was a front-end engineer for BitTorrent between 2013 and 2014. He left the company to work for Walmart eCommerce long before Sun acquired BitTorrent in June 2018. Nonetheless, Sun has still offered Zhou a job to help him recoup his loss of over 560 million CAD. Since the acquisition, BitTorrent announced the BitTorrent Token (BTT) which was sold during an initial coin offering (ICO) on Binance Launchpad on Jan 28, 2019. Nearly 60 billion BTT were sold within 15 minutes. Because of the low number of total participants, Sun offered an airdrop of BTT to those who were unable to participate in the ICO. The airdrop was successfully carried out on a number of exchanges including Binance, on Feb 12, 2019. BTT has also partnered with TRX, Binance Charity, and the KYI Foundation to support #VoiceYourLove, a campaign to raise awareness about ALS and raise funds for the ALS Association. Do you think that Zhou will accept Sun’s job offer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!