Exclusive: CoinGecko CEO Bobby Ong calls out HitBTC for “grossly misconstrued” statements of Trust Score cooperation; Part 2

Now that the backstory for the CoinGecko-HitBTC issue has been established, Ong’s statements, with context, are far more telling of the “misconstrued,” nature of the exchange and once again show how marketing or rather marketability is necessary in the cryptocurrency world.

 In the interview, Ong described the initially tweet by the exchange as ‘not very pleasant.’ Prior to his call with Tim Novak, a member of the Business Development team of the exchange, the tweet announcing the “partnership,” between the two parties was put out, which was a misrepresentation, right off the bat.

 “During the call, I actually mentioned to Tim [Novak] that this is not true we’ve not got into any sort of partnership.”

 The crux of the conversation between the two revolved around the “Trust Score,” with Novak suggesting some ‘improvement,’ and some “metrics” to “be looked at.” However, Ong mentioned that Novak failed to answer some questions about the inner workings of HitBTC, which can be indicated as a red flag.

 Ong, in direct email correspondence with AMBCrypto detailed the list of information that despite being questioned on, was not provided by the HitBTC representatives,

“I asked Tim about the founders of HitBTC and who they are, where are they located, and their nationalities. This question was not answered by Tim and he mentioned that he could not disclose the answers to me. He also added that HitBTC has over 100 employees distributed globally.”

Not resting the case there, Ong even shed light on the accusations that have been leveled against the exchange, with respect to proof of reserves and liquidation concerns. Given that in the upcoming versions of the “Trust Score,” proof of reserves will be an important metric, Ong prodded but Novak maintained that these were just accusations. Ong detailed the sam,

 “He maintained that the Proof of Reserves accusations were just accusations. I told him that CoinGecko will be looking at exchanges wallet reserves in our next iteration of Trust Score and this includes looking at HitBTC’s reserves.”

Since the intimation of the “partnership,” and the quick revert to “cooperation,” came about the accusations against HitBTC have not subsided. The exchange has also been taking prolonged maintenance breaks which several in the community have suspicions on as well.

From a neutral perspective, we would hope the “cooperation,” between the two helps rid the exchange of volume-meddling activity, if any, while improving the Trust Score in the process.