So it finally happened. After months of people preaching to avoid BitGrail, those who were unable to get out in time will now have been burned. It is unclear what's in store for NANO now, it will hinge heavily on what the core team does now to assist with the situation, as well as the authorities. Bomber (Francesco, BitGrail's owner) has been less than helpful, even threatening to make deceitful statements regarding Nano at the end of the chat log (which you can find here. Below is Bomber's statement, after which you will see NANO Core Team's statement.
Let me know what you think the situation is going to be like over the next coming days, personally I think NANO will bounce back as always - no matter the amount of FUD and bad news we get. Good tech is good tech :)
Bomber's statement:
"Bitgrail S.r.l. Informs its users that internal checks revealed unauthorized transactions which led to a 17 million Nano shortfall, an amount forming part of the wallet managed by Bitgrail S.r.l.
Today a charge about those fraudulent activities has been submitted to the competent authorities and now is under police investigation.
We inform you that the other currencies have not been involved.
In order to conduct further verifications, all the activities will be temporarily suspended (including withdrawals and deposits). This procedure is indispensable for users security.
We do offer our full and sincerest apologies to our customers and to whom has been involved into the illegal transfers of Nano occurred on our platform.
Other announcements will be released shortly.
Thank you for your attention."
Source here.
If you read the chat log, you will notice the statement is very different from the tone in there...
Anyway, here's NANO Core Team's Statement on this
""On February 8th, 2018, the Nano Core team was informed by Francesco “The Bomber” Firano — owner and operator of the BitGrail exchange — of a loss from the BitGrail wallet. Our team promptly contacted law enforcement and we are fully cooperating with law enforcement on this matter.
From our own preliminary investigation, no double spending was detected on the ledger and we have no reason to believe the loss was due to an issue in the Nano protocol. The problems appear to be related to BitGrail’s software.
We had no knowledge of BitGrail’s insolvency prior to February 8th.
In our conversation yesterday (which you can find attached here, this link has been edited to redact a private email.), Firano informed us of missing funds from BitGrail’s wallet. An option suggested by Firano was to modify the ledger in order to cover his losses — which is not possible, nor is it 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.
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.
Please refer to our Twitter account
for future links to official statements.
Thank you,
The Nano Core Team"
Source here.
Personally I think everyone should never have used BitGrail as soon as KuCoin was available, but that's just me. I have not been affected by this (apart from the price crash) but I do feel for a lot of the people who did.
At the moment, there is over 19,000,000 NANO in BitGrail users' profiles - their wallet only has 4,000,000. So they are as of right now, insolvent but I guess actions over the next coming days will likely be defining the history of NANO.
Stay tuned, stay strong and I'm sure we'll get through this bump and laugh about it in months to come.
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