NANO, a cryptocurrency, is not liable for BitGrail’s February hack. This is according to a verdict by U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon who has dismissed counts of gross negligence on NANO’s developer’s team that resulted in BitGrail’s hack early this year.
Over $150 million worth of NANO coins were stolen from the exchanges’ custody. It is alleged that NANO developers’ team turned down BitGrail’s founder Francesco Firano to initiate a hard-fork protocol that will compensate affected users. Accompanied with team wrote that, “…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.”
NANO further clarified that the hack had nothing to do with its security protocol and that there was a distinct possibility that Firano lied to the team about the solvency of his exchange platform.
New twists
Firano later threatened to sue NANO for defamation after NANO publicly turned down his request to corrupt the open source ledger. Firano’s request elicited a lot of suspicion over the legitimacy of the hack claims.
Some quarters of the cryptocurrency space speculated that his company might have probably misappropriated client’s tokens in its custody then blamed it on the hack to avoid taking responsibility.
Justice for victims
NANO through its foundation vowed that it will help victims of the hack get justice over BitGrail’s insolvency by sponsoring a legal fund. BitGrail has however, offered to compensate victims of the hack under condition that they drop all lawsuits against the exchange. The platform maintains that it is not taking responsibility for the hack, still blaming it on NANO’s protocols.
Nonetheless, the compensation will not be in NANO coins but rather in 20% XRB tokens and 80% Bitgrail shares (BGS), Bitgrail’s proprietary cryptocurrency.
The jury’s decision to acquit NANO of all charges related to the hack leaves only BitGrail to take responsibility of the hack. The lawsuit equally affected NANO’s market performance as the firm has been going through a bear year especially after the announcement of the hack. It is only a matter of time we shall find out if NANO’s vindication will impart positively to its coins performance going forward.
