Mysterious death of Belleville crypto-king the focus of upcoming CBC podcast series

The first two episodes of CBC’s A Death in Cryptoland premier Tuesday, a podcast investigating the life and death of Belleville-born millionaire Gerald Cotten. Photo by CBC Media Centre.

By Jacob Willis

BELLEVILLE ‒ In November of 2013, Belleville-born businessman Gerald Cotten founded Quadriga Fintech Solutions, a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange company. The business major at York University had only learned of Bitcoin a few years earlier.

By 2017, Cotten was a millionaire. The surge in Bitcoin prices was a gravy train for Quadriga, at one point believed to be the largest crypto-exchange in the nation. 

But its facade began to crumble over the next year. When Bitcoin prices fell, investors attempted to claim upwards of millions of dollars through the service only to find their accounts frozen. 

On January 14, 2019, Quadriga announced that Cotten had died while travelling in India. With him went millions of dollars owed to thousands of customers; since only Cotten knew the password to the “cold wallets” that stored the funds, all that money was lost and the creditors weren’t reimbursed.

CBC will premier A Death in Cryptoland next Tuesday, a six-part podcast series investigating Cotten’s wild life and mysterious death. 

Tech journalist Takara Small will be hosting. Small is a technology columnist for CBC Radio’s Metro Morning and was named as one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women by Women’s Executive Network.

“What’s really interesting about this series is how little people knew about Gerald Cotten the person,” Small told QNet News Wednesday. “Journalists have covered his company, they’ve touched on the difficulties his customers have endured, but who he is as a person hasn’t really been explored like it has on this podcast.”

“Gerry was able to use technology to get people to trust him, and in some cases, share their life savings with him. Everyone is talking about cryptocurrency right now, and this is a Canadian at the heart (of one of its biggest scandals). It’s definitely something that sticks with you.”

Cotten’s Belleville heritage holds weight on a personal level for Small as well, a native of a small hamlet near Warkworth. She says Belleville was the place to be for her and her friends growing up, the hot-spot for shopping or just hanging out.

“Without giving too much away, we do talk about Belleville,” she said. “I grew up just around the corner from there. That was a really interesting aspect of the story for me, talking to locals about Gerry and Belleville and being like, ‘Oh, I know where that is!’”

The complex world of cryptocurrency could scare off some who are interested in Cotten’s story. Small reassured these hesitant listeners that with her tech expertise and the inherent juiciness of the story, no amount of naivete could dilute the product.

“I’ve been covering this for a while. I’m here to guide the listener through the journey ‒ at the heart of this story, it’s a mystery. It’s about a man who disappeared with millions of dollars at his disposal. People aren’t sure if he’s alive or if he’s dead, or if he’s on a tropical island somewhere sipping a pina colada. I understand people thinking this is a technology podcast and may not understand everything, but technology is just one aspect of the story.”

The podcast features an all-star team of producers and writers. Among them are Enza Uda, an investigative journalist who previously produced the award-winning Go Public news segment, and Joan Webber, producer of CBC’s The Current. 

For Loyalist College graduate Emilie Quesnel, working as a digital producer on A Death in Cryptoland was an “unforgettable” experience.

“Working with such veteran journalists has been a real treat,” Quesnel said. “Being with (Uda, Webber and Small) as they go through the audio and nit-pick has been really neat. Getting to see how the sausage gets made, from the standpoint of somebody who has only been in the industry for a few years, is really exciting. Just being near them is making me a lot smarter. I can absorb all their wealth of knowledge.”

“Takara is the best,” Quesnel continued. “I was just telling her yesterday that she’s a dream host. She’s got a lot of stuff on the go, yet she’s still so available to me, answering emails and sitting in on our meetings. She’s really fun to work with as well. She’s excited about the show and passionate about the content.”

A Death in Cryptoland will be available on all podcast streaming services.