A Canadian cryptocurrency exchange is currently in a bit of hot water, reportedly unable to pay clients almost $300m after their founder died unexpectedly.

Ever since computers began to take off in terms of popularity, the general public has been taught proper password safety. The rules are usually pretty simple; don’t use ‘password’ as your password, don’t write your password down next to your computer, and don’t tell it to your mates.

However, it seems that the founder of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange took these rules a little too literally, having passed away while in possession of the only password that allows his company’s clients to access their funds.

As CoinDesk reports, Jennifer Robertson, the widow of late QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, explained to a Canadian court that her husband had “sole responsibility for handling the funds and coins”, leaving the company unable to pay its clients.

Cotten passed away back in December while visiting Jaipur, India. He had been in the country to assist in the opening of an orphanage and safe house for children in need.

While a death certificate was included in the exhibit presented to the court recently, some clients of QuadrigaCX felt it was a strange business practice for the company not to announce Cotten’s death until January.

Court documents show that as of the end of January, approximately 115,000 users were signed up to the service, with a total of $180 million CAD worth of cryptocurrency to their names.

While the company recently had their funds frozen by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, this issue has since been resolved, though they’re now finding themselves unable to access the funds that they hold.

According to Jennifer Robertson’s explanation, QuadrigaCX held “only a minimal amount of coins” in a hot wallet (that is, one connected to the internet), while the rest was held in cold storage (an offline repository, akin to a bank vault).

“The normal procedure was that [Gerald Cotten] would move the majority of the coins to cold storage as a way to protect the coins from hacking or other virtual theft,” Robertson explained.

Gerald Cotten was reportedly the only employee of QuadrigaCX to have access to business records or the company’s cold storage system. As a result, Robertson claims that “Quadriga’s inventory of cryptocurrency has become unavailable and some of it may be lost.”

While a consultant has apparently been trying to access Cotten’s encrypted laptop, they have had only a limited amount of success, meaning a large amount of cryptocurrency could be lost to sensible password attitudes.

Of course, we doubt we can help at all, but maybe ‘hunter2’ might be a good last-ditch effort if all else fails.

Check out George’s ‘secret code’ on Seinfeld:

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