Bittrex Lash Out At Bitcoin Gold After BTG Refuse To Pay Hack Compensation

Bittrex Lash Out At Bitcoin Gold After BTG Refuse To Pay Hack Compensation
Popular cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex have announced that they will be delisting Bitcoin Gold (BTG) and all BTG trading pairs after the team behind BTG refused to pay out compensation to Bittrex who suffered as a result of hacks that took place on the BTG network in May 2018. According to Cryptovest:
“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.”
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.”
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. Investment Disclaimer
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