Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
BitGrail, an Italian cryptocurrency exchange that offers trading in crypto-to-Nano coins (XRB) (formerly known as RaiBlocks), announced it has been robbed of Nano tokens worth $170 million.
According to a notice on its site, BitGrail has conducted internal checks that revealed unauthorized transactions which led to a 17 million Nano shortfall from the company wallet. No other cryptocurrencies have been involved.
Due to the theft, BitGrail has temporarily suspended trading and deposit and withdrawals and is conducting further verifications. The matter has been reported to the police.
BitGrail said it will keep its users posted on the further developments.
According to another official publication, of the Nano core team, the problems arose from BitGrail’s software. The Nano core team also said it suspects BitGrail’s owner Francesco Firano (Francesco The Bomber) of misleading them and the BitGrail users of its solvency and that the exchange may have been insolvent “for a significant period of time”. The Nano core team refuses to cooperate with Firano with regard to modifying the ledger and help him cover his losses, because it is impossible and is not a “direction we would ever pursue.”
“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”, the developers said and added that they are also reporting the matter to the authorities and will cooperate to the investigation.
Nano was rebranded from RaiBlocks earlier this January. Before the rebranding the token traded at $.20 on Dec. 1, 2017. It surged to a high of $37.62 on Jan. 2, before dipping below $7 on Feb. 6, according to CoinMarketCap. At the time of writing this article, despite the news of the hack, the Nano token trades at $9.82.