Bittrex delists Bitcoin Gold, BTC-BTG, ETH-BTG and USDT-BTG to be removed on September 14th, 2018
Bitcoin Gold will be removed from popular cryptocurrency exchange, Bittrex on September 14th 2018. All the pairings, BTC-BTG, ETH-BTG and USDT-BTG will be removed. That said, Bittrex is not the top liquidity provider as Bittrex’s popularity has been going downhill from quite some time. Majority of volume comes from HitBTC, Bithumb, Binance, Bitinka, and Bitfinex.
So why is Bitcoin Gold being removed by Bittrex?
The reason is Bittrex asked Bitcoin Gold team to pay them 12,372 BTG to cover the loss they incurred due to 51% attack on Bitcoin Gold network. And while the Bittrex agreed to cover part of the loss by paying from own BTG reserves, the BTG team still had to pay more than 6000 BTG as remaining amount.
This did not go well as Bitcoin Gold team as they claim to be a non-profit organization has no revenue streams, all BTG mining rewards go to miners, and nearly half the funds in the Endowment remain time-locked for future use. Instead, they offered Bittrex a short term BTG loan from the Endowment to help Bittrex address short-term liquidity problems, but they declined and insisted on a payment.
In defense, the Bitcoin Gold team claims that during the 51% attack, they had given Bittrex the attacker’s wallet address and advised they raise their confirmation requirements to give them adequate time to respond. They also advised them to flag and review any unusually large deposits. The team also warned them of the onset of the actual attack which victimized them.
That said, Bittrex was victim of double spend attack performed by the attacker. He deposited 12,371 BTG from the wallet and several hours later, traded the BTG for other cryptocurrencies. After that, he used 51% attack to double-spend those BTG, invalidating their original deposit. Here is the link the transaction – https://explorer.bitcoingold.org/
Naturally, this had a negative effect on Bitcoin Gold’s pricing as it resulted in a big dump.
This is not the first time Bitcoin Gold is affected by hack. Back in June 2018, Bitcoin Gold’s website and forum were hacked and redirected to a funny YouTube video.