Ernst & Young (EY), the trustee of now-defunct crypto exchange, QuadrigaCX, revealed that it has only around $29.8 million in funds to repay almost $171 million in claims made by the creditors of the exchange.

The trustee filed its seventh report with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Thursday, providing an update on the administration of the bankruptcy.

It has received completed claim forms from 17,053 creditors of the exchange, while 42,957 total claims were filed. The claims were made for multiple currencies, including both cryptos and fiat. 

The court motion detailed that creditors are seeking $90.18 million in Canadian dollars, $6.02 million in the US dollars, 24,427.0442 Bitcoins, 65,457.5983 Ethereum, 87,031.2937 Litecoin, and a few more.

Despite the astronomical number of claims, the trustee does not have enough funds to meet them. It gathered only $29.8 million by selling the assets of the exchange’s now-deceased founder, Gerald Cotten and settling with his widow. It also received some of the funds from the exchange’s third-party payment firms.

“The Trustee recovered approximately CDN$1.4 million of cryptocurrency (based on prevailing prices) and approximately US$662,000 to date,” the motion stated. “The Trustee intends to convert all asset holdings (U.S. dollars and cryptocurrency) into Canadian dollars for distribution to the Affected Users based upon the Canadian dollar equivalent value of all creditor claims.”

QuadrigaCX Saga

The Canadian crypto exchange’s troubles started when its founder and chief unexpectedly died in late 2018, without sharing the private key of the exchange’s funds to anyone else. The exchange also suffered further losses from its dealings with controversial crypto shadow-bank, Crypto Capital.

In an earlier report, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) revealed that Cotten gambled with the clients’ funds.

“Mr. Cotten proceeded to trade these account balances with Affected Users that had deposited real assets, as such, Quadriga’s assets likely never matched the liabilities owed to Affected Users,” EY stated in the latest motion.