Caught Up in Steem Squabble, Bittrex to Return Tokens Diverted in Hard Fork

After the 23.6 million steem tokens were confiscated from community dissenters in a tit-for-tat Steem hard fork Wednesday, they were quickly diverted to Bittrex by an unknown individual (or individuals) in the hope they would be returned to their original 64 owners – currently all persona non grata at the blockchain project. After the anti-Tron faction forked the network to create HIVE – a near-identical copy of Steem that copied over and then confiscated tokens linked to Tron founder Justin Sun – the pro-Tron team retaliated by forking Steem to seize tokens belonging to 64 of the former witnesses – blockchain validators – and stakeholders involved in creating the HIVE splinter group.

A note on the transaction said the funds had been "stolen by the Steem witnesses," and asked Bittrex to "please return them to their original owners prior to the fork." A former Steem witness, who goes by the name "Marky," and had $46,000 worth of Steem confiscated Wednesday, told CoinDesk he believes this community member – whoever they may be – had access to an app and were able to cling on to the keys linked to the community321 wallet.

Timeline of Steem