Bitcoin Gold, a hard fork of Bitcoin has been put into the delist category by Bittrex, one of the popular cryptocurrency wallets with a 24-hour trade volume of $46.98 million, as of press time.
The reason why Bittrex is all set to delist Bitcoin Gold is the refusal of its team to pay the demanded compensation of 12,371 BTG against the 51% attack in May. It is alleged that due to the BTG team’s negligence, the hackers were able to attack the currency and steal over 388,000 BTG; almost $18 million at that time.
On 19th May 2018, Bitcoin Gold was attacked by making use of rented computing power to take over more than 51% of the total hash power. After doing so, the hackers deployed the infamous ‘double-spending’ technique for stealing coins from the Seattle-based crypto exchange by making it transfer an amount higher than what it needed to. Along with Bittrex, the hackers hijacked several popular crypto exchanges, including Binance, Bitfinex, and Bithumb.
As per an announcement titled ‘statement regarded Bittrex’ uploaded by Bitcoin Gold, the team has confirmed that it will no longer be listed on Bittrex as they have declined to make the demanded payment.
“We suspect the impact Bittrex’s action on our Ecosystem will not be substantial, as Bittrex has not been a top liquidity provider for BTG in recent months,” stated the announcement. Bitcoin Gold considers HitBTC, Bithumb, Binance, Bitinka, and Bitfinex to be its top exchanges, with Bittrex representing “a small fraction” of their current volume.
The team further mentioned that the risk of such attacks in future had been mitigated with their network upgrade hard-fork on 3rd July. However, as per the statement, Bittrex has informed the BTG team that it will delist the coin as they are not taking responsibility of their chain, which “meant paying Bittrex 12,372 BTG to cover the loss they incurred.”
Further, as reported in the statement, Bittrex informed the BTG team that it would cover a part of the loss from its reserves, but the remaining 6,000 BTG would have to be paid by them, failing which they would be delisted. “This may seem like a small amount to a profitable exchange, but it is a significant fraction of the available funds from the Endowment which supports the Bitcoin Gold project,” added the statement.
