Published
5 years ago on
September 04, 2018
“In May, Bitcoin Gold experienced the so-called 51% or double-spend attacks with $18 million worth of BTG stolen from several exchanges. Bittrex was one of the main victims of the hack.  First, the US-based trading platform demanded BTG 12,372 (around $265,000) as compensation, but later lowered the sum to around BTG 6,000, according to the BTG team. The body refused to pay because it is a non-profit organization (Endowment), and offered a loan to Bittrex instead, which was, however, rejected by the exchange.â€As it stands, across trading pairs of BTG/BTC, BTG/ETH and BTG/USDT Bittrex currently makes up around 3.27% of BTG’s market share, meaning a delisting and the removal of BTG from the Bittrex exchange will have a very negative impact on the traded volume of the Bitcoin Gold currency. Why haven’t BTG paid the compensation? Simply put, the BTG team believe that the hacks occurred as a result of a security lapse within Bittrex and therefore the team don’t feel they are responsible for paying any compensation. According to Cryptovest, BTG have said:
“In light of the potential impact on the BTG Community, our Board carefully considered their demand but concluded we are not empowered to make a disbursement from the Endowment for the purpose of covering a private company’s losses from their own security failures.â€Either way, this is going to have a heavy impact on BTG. It does seem to be an act of revenge on Bittrex’s part but then I guess they are disgruntled at losing $100,000’s as a result of BTG vulnerabilities. It’s a petty argument, one that is no doubt going to split the crypto community. Overall though, Bittrex have the power here and they are operating well within their rights so I guess for now, there’s nothing anybody can do about this.
