Why Bitcoin Gold Got Delisted From Bittrex

Crypto exchange Bittrex is set to delist Bitcoin Gold, a hard fork of Bitcoin, by Sept.14, after details of an $18 million hack of the BTG network in May emerged this week.

As per the nature of a hard fork, to claim BTG coins, crypto users had to hold the original Bitcoin at the time of the fork to automatically receive an equal amount of BTG at the same address.

"Bitcoin Gold codebase also contains a private premine of 8,000 blocks. Please be aware that if a market does open, there is a possibility of the developers selling their premined BTG on the open market."

On Nov. 13, Bitcoin Gold became mineable, as the team tweeted: "For those who had doubts, BTG blockchain was born. #1CPU1VOTE".

"A massive attack was made in an apparent effort to disrupt the mainnet launch, but the Bitcoin Gold team managed to get the network up and running albeit a little later than planned," BTG developers added in an official release post following the launch.

The exchange has reportedly requested more than 12,000 BTG as a compensation from Bitcoin Gold for the double-spend attack.

While Bittrex has blamed BTG's PoW algorithm as the reason that led to the double-spending attack, Bitcoin Gold claimed that their team "Is not responsible for security policy within private entities like Bittrex," adding that the exchanges "Must manage the related risks and are ultimately responsible for their own security." However, with that, BTG developers acknowledged the risks represented by their own blockchain and have already announced a hard fork upgrade plan.

BTG's unclear future Following the latest attack on BTG, the Bittrex exchange decided to delist the currency from their exchange by Sept. 14, a move which found approval among a number of Reddit users.

"Bittrex informed us that they make this decision because the BTG team would not 'take responsibility for our chain,' and that taking responsibility meant paying Bittrex 12,372 BTG to cover the loss they incurred. They later informed us they would cover part of the loss from their own BTG reserves and requested we pay the remaining ~6,000 BTG, and that if we did not, we would be delisted."

While it is yet unclear if other exchanges will follow Bittrex in delisting BTG, at press time, Bitcoin Gold's market share amounts to $368 million, and the coin is trading at around $21.39, ranking 30th by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap data.