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Bittrex To Delist Bitcoin Gold Cryptocurrency Following $18 Million Hack

Bitcoin Gold, a popular hard fork of Bitcoin, hasn’t had a great year. For one the assets price has fallen by over 96% in the span of 8 months. Secondly, the $ 18M hack has landed the token in more trouble as cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has decided to delist it.

The aforementioned hack took place in May when the Bitcoin Gold was hijacked with rented computing power. Bittrex,  a Seattle-base exchange, was ransacked of more than 388,000 BTG (approx. $18 million at the time), as the hackers took control of more than 51 percent of the overall hash power. The Hackers were able to use “double-spending,” a method of repeatedly tricking an exchange into transferring more coins than it should.

An approximate of $18 million in cryptocurrency was stolen directly from exchanges. It is unclear how many exchanges were hit in this attack, however, Bittrex requested for the Bitcoin Gold team to pay a compensation of over 12,000 BTG ($265,000) for apparent negligence to the rising threat of ASICs. Notably, this seems to be more than a request from Bittrex side as the exchange forewarns Bitcoin Gold to pay up by September 14th or the token will be delisted.

In response, the Bitcoin Gold development team told their side of the story in a lengthy statement :

Bittrex informed us that they make this decision because the BTG team would not “take responsibility for our chain,” and that taking responsibility meant paying Bittrex 12,372 BTG to cover the loss they incurred. They later informed us they would cover part of the loss from their own BTG reserves and requested we pay the remaining ~6,000 BTG, and that if we did not, we would be delisted.

Furthermore, the team stated that it the 51 percent attack that led the double-spending was not their fault and blamed the Proof-of-Work consensus style on which Bitcoin Gold operates.

The Bitcoin Gold team is not responsible for security policy within private entities like Bitrex (sic); those who earn revenue running a private business must manage the related risks and are ultimately responsible for their own security.

Clearly, the two companies don’t see eye to eye on this topic. While the aforementioned theft is a rare occurrence, the long-term survivability of Bitcoin Gold has come under scrutiny.  Bittrex’s likely delisting might fuel the uncertainty towards the token. Currently, Bitcoin Gold is ranked 29th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

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