Many of you heard about the
NiceHash hack from December 2017, when almost 5000BTC were stolen.
Many things happened since then:
- the CEO Marko Kobal resigned from his position soon after the hack, contributing to the rumors that the hack was an inside job
- NH states that all the customers will be reimbursed in full at the beginning of 2018, after a group of investors would help the company; with this move, nobody could sue them since stolen funds were (supposed to be) paid back
- NH states that a police investigation started
- the CTO Matjaz Skorjanec leaves the company to his father
- the CTO Matjaz Skorjanec, a well-known hacker (developer of Mariposa botnet), got arrested in autumn of 2019
- instead of paying back all stolen money at the beginning of 2018, NH paid a monthly percentage to the clients, starting with 5-10% monthly and lowering the percentage in a few months to 1%
- they kept paying 1%/month until December 2019, reaching a total of 82% paid back in what they called the "repayment program"; although the percentage paid back monthly was very low (1%), at least there was a hope
- since January 2018 nothing was heared anymore about the police investigation, nor about the investors.
However, in December 2019, a shocking announcement was made:
NiceHash, the largest hash-power broker marketplace is forced to pause the Repayment program at 82%.
The reason for stopping paying back is the following: "Unfortunately, NiceHash will not be able to fulfill its promise to fully reimburse all users and achieve the 100% reimbursement status or the Repayment program in the foreseeable future. We have been repaying the old balance to our users through our fees and thus cutting our income. Our income and thus Repayment program assets are subject to taxation. The current state of the Repayment program is at 100,04% of the original loss value in our accounting books".
Could this be the final of the alleged scam from December 2017? Many said it was no hack, but an internal job. The managers resignation might also be linked. Many suspected that although NH stated they are paying back cutting their profits, they were actually paying back from customers' earnings, which earned less and less money from selling their hash power (for example, 1xNvidia 1080Ti would produce per day in summer of 2017 about 9$ and today it produces only 45 cents). After all, if it was a scam, they kept 18% of the "stolen" funds, which mean about 850BTC.
However, even if it was not a scam, they are now responsible in front of the law. If until now they could not be sued since they were paying back, not the situation changed. Although they say that the taxes for paying back 82% took to a total amount paid by them to 100.04% of the stolen funds, they have to convince a court of law that they can stop paying back the remaining 18%.
I'm curious of other opinions about this case.