Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Hot Docs: Dead Man’s Switch
CBC Docs | Dec 30, 2021
When cryptocurrency whiz kid Gerald Cotten died suddenly in India, $215 million disappeared.
Dead Man's Switch: a crypto mystery unpacks the mysterious and improbable story of Canadian CEO Gerald Cotten and his failed cryptocurrency exchange, QuadrigaCX. It's part of Hot Docs on CBC, a multiplatform festival-at-home experience providing Canadians with front-row access to titles from the 2021 Hot Docs Festival.
On November 30, 2018, 30-year-old Cotten travelled to India to open an orphanage and celebrate his honeymoon. Nine days later, he was allegedly dead due to Crohn's disease, and $215 million in cash and cryptocurrency were suddenly missing.
See: QuadrigaCX: A Review by Staff of the Ontario Securities Commission
A month later, when his widow, Jennifer Robertson, announced his death to the world with a post on the Quadriga exchange website, creditors, journalists, regulators and cryptocurrency enthusiasts all jumped on the story. They were determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Cotten and who held the keys to the fortunes of 115,000 creditors.
Filmmaker Sheona McDonald fleshes out the story of Cotten's life, death and business dealings through interviews with skeptics like crypto-activist Mitch Airey and author David Gerard, independent journalists and financial analysts Amy Castor, Alexandra Posadzki and Taylor Monahan plus compliance regulators, friends and creditors suffering real and sometimes significant financial losses.
Every player has a different perspective on what happened, what didn't happen or what needed to happen. But with over $200 million worth of Canadian fiat and cryptocurrency lost, there is one question they all ask:
"Where's the money, Gerry?".
See: QuadrigaCX Aftermath: The Bigger Picture
QuadrigaCX is not the first exchange to be hacked or go under, and it won't be the last. Questionable activity is a constant threat in a contemporary industry growing quickly in an unregulated environment. The fact that more than 100,000 clients trusted QuadrigaCX with their money and left their funds and coins on the exchange shows that we are used to trusting a regulated system of banking and securities. But what happens when there is no system to trust?
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