OOPS: A Crypto-Mystery: Is $140 Million Stuck or Missing?

On Jan. 15, the company announced on its website that Mr. Cotten had died on Dec. 9 from complications related to Crohn’s disease while building an orphanage in India. He was 30 years old. Two weeks later, the exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in a Nova Scotia court.

Quadriga said its customers have accounts with a total balance of about C$250 million. Only about C$70 million of those customer funds is in cash. About C$180 million, or about $140 million, is in cryptocurrencies held in a reserve account maintained on Mr. Cotten’s laptop, the company said in its bankruptcy filing. Quadriga would need control of that account to send those cryptocurrency funds to customers.

Mr. Cotten ran the business out of his home in Fall River, Nova Scotia, his widow, Jennifer Robertson, stated in an affidavit. Ms. Robertson said Mr. Cotten was the only person who moved funds from an active account—called a “hot wallet” in crypto circles because it is connected to the internet—to the reserve account, which is an offline “cold wallet.” The company said it has been unable to break into Mr. Cotten’s laptop to try to recover the access keys.

If the laptop can’t be accessed, the funds could be permanently frozen.

Poof.

VIDEO: Sour Ocasio-Cortez refuses to applaud ‘cooperation, compromise, common good.’

ROBERT REICH, ONE DAY BEFORE #SOTU: Democrats must not give in to Trump’s hateful speech. “Trump discussing the state of the union is like pyromaniac discussing lighter fluids. His goal is, and has always been, disunion. The man thrives on divisiveness. It’s how he keeps himself the center of attention, fuels his base and ensures that no matter what facts are revealed, his followers will stick by him. There’s another reason Trump aims to divide – and why he pours salt into the nation’s deepest wounds over ethnicity, immigration, race and gender.”

Most columns have a short shelf life, but this one aged faster than a fruit fly.

MATT MARGOLIS: 9 Liberal Celebrities Who Have a Blackface Problem. “It’s no wonder Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have been silent about Gov. Northam.”

IT’S SOTU LIVE AND/OR DRUNKBLOGGING at the PJMedia Live Blog.

UPDATE: From the comments.

Hat(e) speech.

VIDEO: Cory Booker Launches Inquisition Against Trump Nominee: ‘Are Gay Relationships … Sinful?’

ONE CHINA, BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY: PLA bombers, jet fighters star in Beijing’s ‘Happy Lunar New Year’ video message to Taiwan. “Propaganda film leaves little to the imagination as images of military aircraft are set against shots of Taiwanese landmarks. Soundtrack calls for ‘Brothers and sisters’ to ‘return [and] reunite’.”

HMM: Dem Reps Signal Support for U.S. Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights.

Two Democratic lawmakers from New York signaled on Monday that they might support the United States officially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

“The only thing the Golan has ever been used for by the Syrians is to bombard Israel,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) told Jewish Insider. “They can’t have that again. It’s unsafe.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said she would support U.S. recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the region if Democratic leadership is on board.

“If our leadership supports it, I don’t see what the problem is,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said. “So I will be supporting it, but only if it goes through the [House Foreign Affairs Committee] and is supported by the committee.”

Call me a cynic, but this looks like an attempt at deflection from the growing antisemitism in the Democratic Party — most especially Ilhan Omar, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

PROFILES IN COURAGE: “Learn to code” was tweeted at me by a sketchy account. I reported it as abusive behavior as part of targeted harassment. Twitter suspended the account within 20 minutes.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Infanticide Endorsing Va. Gov. Northam Got $2 Million From Planned Parenthood.

TACKLING THE IMPORTANT ISSUES: NYC Lawmaker Wants To Throw Chefs In Jail For Serving Foie Gras.

Not only is foie delicious, but the geese raised for it are not mistreated.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update.

LAWFARE: Wasserman Schultz Vows to Take a Trump National Emergency to Court. “Military construction subcommittee chairwoman says ‘the president would deprive and starve the members of our military if he takes this act’.”

SAFETY: One School District’s Security Upgrade: Facial Recognition, Tracking IDs and AR-15s.

The school district here uses a facial recognition system to scan for people not allowed on school grounds. IDs track the whereabouts of students and staff. Teachers have cellphone panic buttons to alert police and soon will have special locks on classroom doors that can be activated remotely. A newly expanded security team keeps 22 AR-15 rifles in their offices.

The district has spent $6.3 million in eight months on these and other security measures to keep students safe from potential shooters.

“My philosophy is you fight fire with fire,” said Mike Matranga, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who was hired as head of security for the school district and is leading these changes.

Broward County, take note.

SPENGLER: Netflix as death cult. “A well-informed friend explains why Netflix hopes to be the dominant power in entertainment: The culture has changed so radically that no-one can watch an old-fashioned film again. After Buster Scruggs, who can watch John Ford? The film libraries of MGM, Disney and Fox will become worthless, the remnants of the old world of misogyny, racism, imperialism and—even worse—optimism. Netflix hopes to capture the cultural shift and become the main purveyor of entertainment that appeals to the new morbidity.”

HMM: Senate votes to keep troops in Syria, Afghanistan.

Senators reportedly sided with Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sponsored the amendment, and voted 70-26 in favor of keeping US forces in both countries.

The Kentucky lawmaker believes ISIS and al Qaeda militants should still be considered a threat, and he’s worried that “a precipitous withdrawal” may only bolster their efforts.

“I’ve been clear about my own views on these subjects,” McConnell told reporters last week after the Senate pushed his amendment through.

“ISIS and al Qaeda have yet to be defeated,” he said. “Withdrawal of the United States forces from the ongoing fight against these groups . . . could allow terrorists to regroup, destabilize critical regions, and create vacuums that could be filled by Iran or Russia, to the detriment of United States’ interests and those of our allies.”

President Trump announced in December that he would be pulling troops out of Syria, saying ISIS “has been defeated.” Reports later emerged saying he would be removing roughly half of the 14,000 US forces stationed in Afghanistan, though sources noted how there were no set plans in the works.

Sen. Rand Paul, a fellow Kentucky Republican, blasted McConnell’s amendment on Monday evening after the vote — accusing him and other senators of forming a “war caucus.”

It feels more like an inertia caucus.

LINDSEY 2.0: Sen. Graham Predicts GOP ‘War’ if Trump Tries to ‘Go It Alone’ on Border Wall. “Graham urged his Republican colleagues to ‘get behind the president’.”

BRYAN PRESTON: New Democrat Abortion Bills Reveal the Truth About the Hardcore ‘Pro-Choice’ Movement. “Margaret Sanger would be very proud of today’s Democratic Party.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Pentagon Releases RFP for ‘Optionally Manned’ Bradley Replacement.

I have far fewer concerns about fully autonomous vehicles which are supposed to kill people and break things on purpose… or is that exactly what SkyNet wants me to think?

ARTISTS, ON THE WHOLE, ARE POLITICAL NAIFS/USEFUL IDIOTS/FELLOW TRAVELERS: Latin Artists Continue to Stand With Venezuela.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s SOTU day and much, much more. “Here is a run down of the guests invited by the President. One of the guests is a young boy who shares the same name as the president and was bullied. People are animals. The Democrats also bring a pageantry of weirdos to the event. AOC has invited the “activist” who acted out a scripted encounter confronted former Senator and CBS’s newest contributor Jeff Flake in an elevator during the Kavanaugh circus. Do you plan to watch?”

Watch? I’ll be drunkblogging it along with the rest of the PJM live blog crew.

RECOVERING: Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes public appearance, first since surgery.

ALLIES: Erdogan says Turkey will not ‘turn its back’ on Palestinian cause.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said Turkey will not “turn its back” on the Palestinian cause or people, adding that Ankara will share “all means available” for ending the occupation and establishing peace.

Erdogan made the remarks during his meeting with the visiting Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament in Istanbul.

He thanked the Knesset members for their service of representing the Palestinian will in Israel’s legislative body against Tel Aviv’s “oppression” in Gaza as well as its “Jewish State” law and “baseless rhetoric” against Turkey.

It wasn’t that long ago that Turkey and Israel acted as de facto allies. And I wonder if Erdogan appreciates the irony that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country where Palestinians are free to elect their own representatives to parliament.

PRIVACY: Google pulls 29 photo apps that stole pictures and promoted scams.

The apps went out of their way to disguise their malicious nature. They’d use multiple compression archives (aka packers) to prevent analysis, and layer on thick encryption for their remote servers. Users would also have trouble removing them, to boot. They’d hide from the standard app ilst (you couldn’t just drag them out to delete them), and would make sure they weren’t linked to the ads.

This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if it weren’t that the apps were popular before Google removed them. All told, 11 of the apps had been downloaded over 100,000 times, and three of those over a million times — that’s a lot of victims. Unless Google can find a way to catch these apps sooner, it may be up to users to keep an eye out for suspicious apps.

Android’s openness can be a real boon to those who need or want it, but it is a two-edged sword.

TRADE: China says it will buy more soybeans, but US farmers see a bleak future.