The engineer 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. (Photo: Shutterstock)

(Bloomberg) –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.

“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.”

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