Gatecoin Trading Platform Re-launching on August 17th

HONG KONG — After suspending trading on May 14th, 2016, following the discovery of a system breach, which resulted in the loss of ETH 185,000 and BTC 250, Hong Kong based Gatecoin will be re-launching its cryptocurrency and blockchain assets trading platform on Wednesday, August 17th, 2016 at 08:00 GMT.

On this re-launch date, clients will be able to trade and transfer BTC, DGD, DAO (withdrawals only), REP (trading only), EUR, USD, and HKD with no trading fees until September 1st, 2016.

New assets to be listed in September

From mid-September, Gatecoin will also be supporting CNY (Mainland China only), DGX (gold-backed Ethereum tokens), ETC (Ethereum Classic) and enabling REP transfers to coincide with the full release of Augur – a decentralized prediction market built on Ethereum, of which REP is the token.

Partial withdrawal of ETH funds will become available

Upon re-launch on August 17th, all Gatecoin ETH holders affected by the hack will be eligible to withdraw 10% of their funds in ETH. The remaining 90% of ETH will be listed as ETD (ETH debt) on client balances, which will be locked until Gatecoin has the ETH liquidity to enable full reconciliation of ETD for ETH. This 10% was calculated based on the ETH Gatecoin had prior to the hack and the ETH 24,434 the Exchange currently has available for transfers, with a small buffer to allow for any transaction errors.

Free Ledger Wallets for clients with balances above ETH 10

Gatecoin clients with balances above ETH 10 before the hack are eligible to request a free Ledger Wallet (hardware wallet) until the end of September 2016, which will be sent by post to your home address. All requests should be sent to support@gatecoin.com with the subject: “Ledger Wallet Request.”

Progress on ETH debt repayment methods

The Gatecoin team continues to progress, albeit slower than expected, on several fundraising and ETH debt repayment channels. Thanks to its first initial post-hack investment of USD 500K from a Japanese investment firm, Gatecoin has received several offers of interest from parties in Greater China. According to Gatecoin, due diligence and negotiations continue with each of these parties. Meanwhile, Gatecoin is continuing to earn fees from the processing of several OTC block trades, which combined with further investment should enable it to reach its goal of full ETH debt reconciliation.

New security team structure

A new CTO will join Gatecoin full-time from September 1st, 2016 and has been advising the exchange on the re-design of its security system prior to the re-launch over the last two months. He brings more than 13 years’ experience as a systems engineer and is a member of the .NET Foundation. He will be joined by additional front-end and back-end engineers with extensive experience working in secured environments. According to the exchange, half of its engineering team will be focused on security and systems administration and the other half focused on enhancing the technology behind the trading platform.

New security procedures for the platform re-launch

• All servers have been migrated to a new, more secure, server hosting provider.
• A higher proportion of servers are high-security, auto-updating Linux servers.
• Extra firewall layers have been added at the server provider level to supplement the firewalls in place on top of each individual server for enhanced protection.
• Round-the-clock security monitoring with constant penetration testing.
• Re-design of intermediary multi-signature wallet systems for all cryptocurrencies and blockchain assets.
• Prohibition of the use of generic logins for improved auditing of the systems.
• Additional segregated application layers within the system architecture to avoid escalation in case of intrusion.

Hong Kong cybercrime investigation still ongoing

Gatecoin continues to work closely with the Hong Kong Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau on the criminal investigation into our system breach. As the investigation is still ongoing it did not provide any details or specific comments at this time.

AboutGatecoin

Founded in 2013 by former investment banking professionals, Gatecoin is a regulated online trading platform for cryptocurrency and blockchain assets. Gatecoin enables individuals and institutions around the world to invest in bitcoin, ether (Ethereum) and other financial assets linked to blockchain technologies. Based and licensed in Hong Kong as a Money Service Operator, Gatecoin offers fiat currency transfers in HKD, EUR, USD and CNY through its bank accounts at reputable financial institutions in Europe and Asia. Gatecoin’s exchange infrastructure is designed, monitored and audited by world-class security experts in order to prevent theft of client assets and information. Before its it was hacked in May 2016, it has been the third largest global trading platform for Ethereum.