Will $170 Million BitGrail Hack Mark the End of Nano?

With over 17 million XRB hacked that amounts to over $170 million, the BitGrail hack is even worse than the recent Mt. Gox heist, in terms of percentage of supply lost. This resulted in the Nano’s market price taking a plunge of about 20%.

The Bomber and The Devs feud

It has been reported by the Nano core team that on February 8, 2018, Francesco “The Bomber” Firano who is the owner and the operator of the BitGrail exchange informed to the team about the hack. Allegedly this heck is even bigger than the Mt. Gox with 17 million XRB being stolen that are worth more than $170 million USD.

Though the reason for this hack is not clear, the conversation provided by the Nano core team points towards a falling out between The Bomber and the devs. Moreover, it has been confirmed by Louis, the community manager on the official Telegram about involving the law enforcement in the situation.

The team concluded that in their preliminary investigation, it didn’t detect any double spending on the ledger and believes that the loss is not because of an issue with the Nano protocol. Apparently, the problem is related to the software of BitGrail.

The Bomber has asked the Nano team to fork the ledger but it is not quite possible here as each account maintains their own Blockchain. On the refusal of devs, The Bomber threatened to claim that the Nano code has a vulnerability. Though it’s not clear where the technical fault lies, given the transparency of the devs and tracking the involved Nano wallets, the problem definitely is with BitGrail.

As per the conversation thread offered by the Nano team, the 17 million XRB BitGrail have been hacked before even November 2017. From late December, BitGrail started stopping withdrawals numerous times till it completely suspended today.

Also on January 14, 2018, in order to comply with regulations, BitGrail made KYC mandatory for every account. Moreover, they forced all of the non-EU users to close their accounts by offering them a grace period of two weeks.

On February 10, 2018, The bomber tweeted :

“In the wake of the unfounded accusations made against me by the dev team and of the dissemination of private conversations that compromise police investigations, Bitgrail s.r.l. is forced to contact the police in order to protect its rights and users.”

Nano goes a deep red

BitGrail is rumoured to be not a hack after all as for the last few months, people have been talking about the “double spend” problem of Bitgrail on social media. But it’s just a rumour that hasn’t been confirmed.

This debacle has led to what was expected that is a deep in Nano prices. At the time of the press, the Nano’s market price took a plunge of about 20 percent.

Despite having no evidence of Nano code being responsible for the hack, it is believed that BitGrail is incompetent.

What are your views on the BiGrail and the rising hacks in the crypto market? Let us know below!