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Software Engineer Loses Life Savings in Quadriga Imbroglio (bloomberg.com)
Tong Zou wasn't a stereotypical crypto bro bent on accumulating flashy trophies such as Lamborghinis when he deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange. The 30-year-old software engineer, who'd been working in California for seven years, just wanted to save a few bucks on transfer fees after deciding to move to Vancouver. It proved to be a C$560,000 ($422,000) mistake. From a report: "It's all my savings, so I'm just living on what little I have left and trying to start over," Zou said in a phone interview Friday from Vancouver, where he has been living out of an AirBnB for the past month. "It pretty much took everything away from me." Zou is one of Quadriga's 115,000 clients who are out of luck after the sudden death of the firm's founder left C$190 million in cryptocurrencies protected by his passwords unretrievable. The exchange has halted operations and was granted protection from creditors on Feb. 5 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax.
"crypto bro bent on accumulating flashy trophies" ? Misandry much?
It doesn't matter what you're doing, but there is an old saying about not keeping all of your eggs in one basket. Sometimes even incredibly intelligent people are capable of horrible foolishness.
Because that sure sounds like a possibility. While he can't get the money back now, I hope the IRS and the Canadian equivalent are looking at this closely, since this is INTERNATIONAL commerce, not just interstate commerce, and deserves all the scrutiny it can get so people understand the consequences of flaunting the rules.
Losing the money is bad, but having it publicized you were dodging taxes while fleeing the country in the process....
He used this cryptocurrency in an attempt to get around the laws and banking regulations of the US and Canada, and now we're supposed to feel sorry for him?
I mean, it's always sad when folks lose everything. But it's not like this guy was particularly innocent in what he was doing.
Check your premises.
I love how cryptocurrency is like a history lesson for Libertarians with regressive economic attitudes. They get to learn the hard way why each discrete financial regulation we have today was enacted.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
That's right but not relevant here. He wasn't do that not as an investment
It's incredibly relevant - he literally took all his eggs (money) and put them in one basket (Enquadrdriofomaligo or whatever it was called).
It doesn't matter if the purpose was investment or short term transfer.
Same reason why when traveling you would not get a bunch of travelers checks and keep them all in the same place. (not that anyone uses travelers checks anymore, but still).
He was moving to Canada from the US and wanted to save money on conversion fees
Unstated: also wanted to avoid Canadian taxes on said money.... and he paid the ultimate conversion fee instead.
It's not that I don't feel somewhat sorry for him, but I think he was way more foolish than unlucky. "unlucky" is almost always just another way to say "didn't really think through possibilities".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another thing is that QuadrigaCX by that point was known to sometimes take more than 2 months for a fiat currency withdrawal. So he went from USD to crypto to CAD in an attempt to save 2%.. but risks aside, he was looking at potentially leaving that $560,000 sitting with no means to invest it for 2 months. For someone knowledgeable to do such a thing, it would seem to me to really require a great distaste for allowing the banking system to take a cut (either that.. or if he chose to have the currency delivered to him as cash rather than wire transfer, then I suppose perhaps he was trying to hide the movement of money). The way I look at, I tend to have sympathy for whomever makes a mistake the first time.. and perhaps it was his first serious use of QuadrigaCX (and thus he wouldn't have known of the stress of waiting for a large amount to come through from them, with unknown timeline).
"Deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange" were the stupidity keywords that convinced me not to feel sorry for him.
After all of the Bitcoin exchanges that have failed over the past few years, why do people still DO this?
TFS says he, "just wanted to save a few bucks on transfer fees" moving from CA to Vancouver, so he probably just intended to park the money for a very short time while he moved and found a new bank. Seems dumb in any case. Nerdwallet lists the average international bank wire fees at $45 outgoing and $13 incoming, so he risked $422K US to save $58. Cheaper still would have been to bring some cash, deposit a check to open a new account and use a CC for a bit. Some life lessons are hard, but "penny wise and pound foolish" doesn't have to be one of them.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah, that is why I am really skeptical of they guy's story. If all he was really trying to do was save money on transfering between banks, transfering all his money into an exchange (which has a a fee), then finding enough sellers to convert nearly half a million dollars into crypto (which also has fees), then later find enough buyers to convert it back (more fees) and finally transfer it back to a bank? That makes zero sense unless he also believed it would be making money in the process.