Bitcoin Gold delisted from major cryptocurrency exchange after refusing to pay hack damages

Bittrex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, has delisted Bitcoin Gold (BTG) from its trading platform over the weekend after BTG maintainers declined to pay half of the damages Bittrex suffered during a complex multi-stage cyber-attack earlier this year. According to a statement from the BTG team, Bittrex asked the BTG team to pay 12,372 BTG (~$256,000) as reparations for the attacks. BTG maintainers said they did all that was possible on their end to help trading platforms prevent the attacks, but they did not have the legal power to intervene inside a private company like Bittrex.

The hack at the center of this dispute took place between May 18 and 22, according to an incident response report published this May. The BTG team says the hack was a combination between a 51% attack and a double-spend attack. BTG experts said hackers rented servers through the NiceHash cryptocurrency mining market to overwhelm the Bitcoin Gold network and take control of more than half the BTG network computational hashrate.

This is what cryptocurrency experts call a ‘51% attack,’ a dangerous scenario that grants attackers the ability to modify transaction details on the entire Bitcoin Gold network. The BTG team says that during the 3.5 days attackers overwhelmed the Bitcoin Gold network, hackers deposited large quantities of Bitcoin Gold funds at cryptocurrency trading platforms.

Source: zdnet.com