Credit: WSJ/Medium/CCN
BitGrail was the 5th most popular exchange for XRB trading according to Coinmarketcap.com, though the volume has now been amended to zero.
With a market valuation today of $10usd per XRB, the total loss is estimated as of now to be $170m.
The Nano Core team were apprised by the owner of crypto currency exchange BitGrail, Francesco “The Bomber” Firano of the loss on Thursday.
BitGrail announced that the fault appears to be related to BitGrail’s core software. In private correspondence, Firano allegedly inquired as to the possibility of modifying the ledger in order to cover his losses, but the development team responded that this line of action:”It's not possible, nor is it a direction we would ever pursue.”
The blog posts then makes subtle accusations regarding the legitimacy of the hack, stating that:
“We now have sufficient reason to believe that Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.”
“Our team promptly contacted law enforcement and we are fully cooperating with law enforcement on this matter….We are preparing all information we have on the matter such as blockchain entries, screenshots, and chat logs”
Following the loss of XRB, Bitgrail has declared insolvency and is not in operation, whilst unofficial sources claim that the exchange had been insolvent a few months earlier. The source in question claims to have discovered that the account from which user funds had supposedly been lost funds. It had multiple transactions of large, even numbers, (e.g. 2000, 6000, 8000 XRB) to the Mercatox exchange.
He/ she describes this behavior as suspicious, adding that:
“It certainly doesn’t look organic.”
The Nano team itself had this also to say in regards to this event.
"BitGrail is an independent business and Nano is not responsible for the way Firano or BitGrail conduct their business. We have no visibility into the BitGrail organization, nor do we have control over how they operate.
We now have sufficient reason to believe that Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.
We will not be responding to individual posts or accusations by Firano regarding this situation. We are preparing all information we have on the matter such as blockchain entries, screenshots, and chat logs and presenting them to law enforcement."
Nano (XRB) was recently known as RaiBlocks. It uses a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) protocol similar to IOTA, with zero fees and scalability advantages. There is a maximum supply of 133 million coins which are all in circulation, and so the breach represents a loss of over 10% of the total supply.
Users of the crypto currency exchange had been reporting issues prior to the event, with many waiting for KYC registration. Many users reported being unable to withdraw their XRB from the exchange.
BitGrail had been a popular choice for Nano investors, as one of the first exchanges to open trading on the coin.
This is why governments have issues with exchanges & no regulations in regards.
The risk of fraud is very high...as the case above.
So what do you think?
