I would have expected by now after witnessing crypto market events such as Bitconnect, Mt Gox and a vast array of ICO scams (amongst others) that nothing in the crypto space would surprise me.
But now I know I was wrong, as it seems the hacked (and I had assumed defunct) cryptocurrency exchange Bitgrail has re-opened.
In February of this year Bitgrail announced that "unauthorised transactions" had led to a significant loss of Nano (XRB), estimates put this financial loss in the range of $160-$200m. Following this the exchange owner Francesco Firano (aka Bomber) led everyone on a merry goose chase all the while shifting blame to the developers and away from himself.
The underlying vulnerabilities were flagged to him through various channels as far back as December 2017, but these were hidden under the rug and those who mentioned them were banned from their Telegram channel.
Worse than this, to this day he continues to be un-cooperative to the insolvency team in providing them with key documentation that would facilitate some kind of compensation to all of the victims of the XRB hack.
Market sentiment has definitely shifted into more bullish territory recently, no longer are people crying out that they are going to buy "$4k bitcoin", so I can only assume that this is an attempt to capitalise ahead of a new bull run and snag the next wave of n00b investors.
Because who else could they be targeting? Noone in their right mind is going to touch that festering cesspit of an exchange with a bargepole.
Don't worry though
Italian authorities are already working to shut it down, issuing Bitgrail with a cease and desist order:
https://www.scribd.com/document/377993148/BitGrail-Order-to-Cease-Operations
Phew, what a day.
