Bittrex Moves To Delist Bitcoin Gold

September 4, 2018 6:54 PM

In an announcement Saturday, Bitcoin Gold announced its token would no longer be available for sale on the Bittrex exchange. Bittrex has so far made no statement about the delisting on its website or Twitter page. Though the coin is still available on the exchange, there is a disclaimer: “The BTG markets (BTC-BTG, ETH-BTG and USDT-BTG) will be delisted and removed on September 14th, 2018.”

According to the Bitcoin Gold Organization, the delisting is the result of a dispute that stems from an attack last May. At that time, the Bitcoin Gold Organization announced: 

“An unknown party with access to very large amounts of hashpower is trying to use ‘51% attacks’ to perform ‘double spend’ attacks to steal money from Exchanges. We have been advising all exchanges to increase confirmations and carefully review large deposits.”

According to the Bitcoin Gold Organization, Bittrex was one of the exchanges that lost money in this attack. After the attack, Bittrex requested compensation (12,371 BTG) from the Bitcoin Gold Organization.

That amount, according to the Bitcoin Gold Organization’s statement, corresponded to the amount that had been “double spent” on the Bittrex exchange during the attack. Someone had apparently deposited that amount in a wallet, and it was then used to purchase other coins (which were withdrawn within a matter of hours).

According to Saturday’s announcement, if the Bitcoin Gold Organization refused to pay, Bitcoin Gold would be delisted from Bittrex. Later, Bittrex said it would accept half the amount – around 6,000 BTG. 

The Bitcoin Gold Organization claims, “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.”

The organization, however, seemed to try to reassure BTG holders that the delisting will not have a major effect on the currency:

“We suspect the impact Bittrex’s action [sic] on our Ecosystem will not be substantial, as Bittrex has not been a top liquidity provider for BTG in recent months,” it wrote.

Tim Prentiss is a writer and editor for ETHNews. He has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Nevada, Reno. He lives in Reno with his daughter. In his spare time he writes songs and disassembles perfectly good electronic devices.

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