Bitcoin Exchange Gatecoin Delays Relaunch, Affirms Refunds to Customers

Gatecoin, the regulated bitcoin and digital currency exchange, recently distributed an email to its customers, disclosing news regarding the company’s attempt to secure funding to cover the losses it suffered after a cyber attack on its hot wallets.

The Hong-Kong based company issued the statement at 12:00 p.m. HKT detailing its efforts to reimburse its clients after it lost over 185,000 ether and 250 bitcoins, worth around $2 million during the sale of assets related to Ethereum-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) in May.

The email detailed three funding channels: Equity Investment, Debenture investment, and profits from block trades.

Despite confirming their first major commitment from Equity Investment, Gatecoin is still working to close the deal while several other potential investors are taking longer than expected due to the fact that they need to conduct additional due diligence.

Conversely, Debenture investment has not turned to be a major source of funding for Gatecoin after the company only received small investment offers from them; however, they are still open to any interest in future participation.

Gatecoin went on to state that they are also working on closing several block trade deals, which are privately negotiated transactions between interested parties, that will allow a reimbursement of a sizeable share of the stolen funds.

Right now, Gatecoin’s only objective is to ensure that all of their clients can withdraw the funds they held Bitcoin Exchange Gatecoin Delays Relaunch, Affirms Refunds to Hot Wallet Breachon the exchange prior to the hot wallet breach. While the digital exchange doesn’t have a date yet for their relaunch, the company developers are working on rebuilding the platform from scratch with the intention of relaunching the exchange with new features on a secure infrastructure.

Aurélien Menant, Gatecoin’s CEO said:

We appreciate the concerns from our clients and the community about the status of ETH withdrawals and want to assure everyone that each day we are getting closer to a solution that will enable us to reimburse the stolen funds in full.

Photo from Flickr. Image courtesy of Raqchel Johnson.