Two Canadian law firms have established a legal defense committee to help clients affected by the death of Gerry Cotten, founder of the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange. Cotten passed away in India in late 2018, but his death was not made public until mid-January; before he left for India, he wrote a will that appointed his widow as the executor of his estate, which included millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency locked in a "cold storage" laptop that only Cotten could access with a secret password. It is estimated that 115,000 QuadrigaCX account holders are owed $198 million locked in the aforementioned laptop. A few of the affected individuals have retained legal counsel to help them recover their funds, and this has prompted the law firms of Cox & Palmer as well as Miller Thompson form a committee for legal cooperation in this matter, which has become quite intricate in recent weeks. In November 2018, a few weeks before Cotten departed his home in Vancouver, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce persuaded Ontario Superior Court to take custody of $19.6 million allegedly owed to QuadrigaCX. CIBC claimed that it could not disburse the funds to the exchange platform because the bank was not sure whether they belonged to QuadrigaCX or to 388 depositors. By February, other Canadian banks voiced their concern over the legitimacy of funds operated by QuadrigaCX, a financial entity that has become insolvent. Just a few weeks ago, the Kraken exchange platform, a respected name in the world of cryptocurrencies, offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could contribute actionable information to recover the missing QuadrigaCX, but this announcement was quickly dismissed as a publicity stunt. To make matters even more intricate, court-appointed auditors from Ernst & Young determined that six previously used cold storage wallets operated by QuadrigaCX have been devoid of funds since April 2018. Among the funds being sought for recovery by QuadrigaCX account holders, 650,000 Ethereum tokens are believed to have been traded and held on major exchanges such as Kraken and Poloniex, a situation that muddies the waters even more because it implies that the cold storage laptop with the missing password may also be empty.