BitGrail, the exchange wracked by the theft of NANO (NANO) coins, is not coming back any time soon. After a long-awaited return to regular trading, BitGrail launched, but only after a few hours closed again.
https://twitter.com/BitGrail/status/991666798583001089
The exchange announced that:
“This morning, following the re-opening, we were notified of a deed by the court of Florence requesting the immediate closure of BitGrail and this situation will persist until a decision is made by the courts, about the precautionary suspension request made by the Bonelli law office on behalf of a client.”
Now, BitGrail awaits the decision of an Italian court, set for May 16, and has closed off its wallets once again, just hours after the re-launch. There is also the insecurity of technological challenges, possibly an attempt to quickly withdraw funds from the exchange. It is hard to estimate the volumes, or the size of funds still locked on BitGrail. The exchange is relatively minor, with only a handful of pairs.
But for owners of NANO coins, the BitGrail exchange is installing an even longer potential lockdown, as users will have to wait to be compensated by future trading fees. The compensations would be either in NANO coins, or in dollar equivalents at $10 prices.
The BitGrail story remains a downward pressure on the price of NANO, which moved above $9 at one point, before sliding back to $8.38. NANO has been locked into a lower range, with few hopes of reaching $20 any time soon.
BitGrail is now seen as a defunct exchange, and just a handful of investors managed to use the window of opportunity and withdraw remaining Bitcoin or other assets. The problem is that the BItGrail company has been deemed insolvent in Italy, and hence its assets, including all the crypto assets deposited, cannot be distributed.
https://twitter.com/GalanteCrypto/status/991768998026113025
Investigations are still underway for the NANO theft, and it is still undetermined if the theft is related to the NANO technology, or whether the flaw lies with the exchange. It has been discovered the exchange may have been hacked as far back as October, and trading continued on the NANO pairs, without the presence of the actual assets.
In a recent blog posted after the launch of the exchange, the Bitgrail lead developer blamed the NANO technology and node crashes on the poor quality, as well as risks related to the asset:
“Despite the negativity towards BitGrail and myself on social media from disillusioned customers, I consistently recommended to the NANO developer team that this technology has major issues and we were having issues all the time with angry customers and death threats against me, our staff and our family members.”
The BitGrail exchange sees the flaws with the NANO node system, and pointed out that other exchanges carrying NANO - Cryptopia, Binance, and KuCoin, had similar troubles with their wallets.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
