Gitcoin’s $450,000 Faux Pas: GTC Plummets on the News

Confirmed by a post made by lead developer, CoachJonathan, more than 520,000 GTC tokens have been lost forever, following their mistaken transfer to GTC token contract, rather than the intended multisig address.

At time of writing, and following a sharp decrease in price, the 521,440 GTC tokens are worth approximately $453,000, according to CoinMarketCap.

The tokens were originally earmarked for a merchandise, memes, and marketing (MMM) proposal, but are now effectively burnt. 

CoachJonathan advocated for both the creation of further safeguards “to ensure something like this never happens again” as well as greater accountability in the future.

GTC Plummets

GTC is Gitcoin’s official governance token and, as a result of the incident, has shed some 2.5% of its value over the last 24h. Combined with bearish market sentiment, this equates to a more than 15% decrease over the past week.

The snafu, which saw nearly half a million dollars worth of Gitcoin’s token lost, serves as a harsh reminder of the dangers of cryptocurrency and, in particular, self-custody.

“Large token holders and multisig signers have a responsibility to be extra diligent when it comes to handling funds that do not belong to them (myself included). Unfortunate as this incident was, I hope it can serve as (yet another) lesson for many of us.” reads CoachJonathan’s post.