Nano (XRB): Free CAPTCHA Coins, a 41x Surge, and 8 Years of Frozen Claims

1. Free Coins for a CAPTCHA: RaiBlocks' Radical Distribution

RaiBlocks began with an unusual bargain: solve a CAPTCHA and receive coins for free. Colin LeMahieu started developing the network in 2014 and launched it in October 2015 to address Bitcoin's slow confirmations and fees. Its distribution mechanism was not a token sale but a CAPTCHA-secured faucet.^[5]

The faucet gave RaiBlocks free to CAPTCHA solvers. When it shut down in 2017, it had distributed 126,248,289 XRB. The cited source separately reports a 7,000,000 XRB developer fund and final supply of 133,248,297 XRB; those published figures differ by eight XRB when added. There was no mining or pre-sale.^[5]

RaiBlocks used a block-lattice where every account keeps its own chain, transactions carry no fee, and confirmations land in about a second. Those protocol features describe transfers on the ledger; they do not establish where faucet recipients later held their coins.^[5]

2. Twenty Cents to Thirty-Six Dollars in Six Weeks

TechCrunch reported XRB had been worth as little as 20 cents in late November 2017. An archived CoinMarketCap snapshot captured the price at $0.892604 on December 10.^[6][3]

Three weeks later, the same page — still titled "RaiBlocks (XRB)" — showed $36.7294 in a snapshot dated January 2, 2018. From those two dated snapshots alone, the gain is roughly 41-fold in 23 days — a derived calculation about prices, not a claim about what sellers realized.^[7][6]

The mania cooled as fast as it had run. By the week of February 8, 2018, the coin — newly renamed Nano in the project's early-2018 rebrand from RaiBlocks — traded around $10, enough for a market capitalization near $1.29 billion — 24th largest at the time.^[3][5]

BitGrail, a small Italian exchange used by affected account holders, tightened withdrawals: on December 19, 2017 it announced KYC checks and daily limits of 0.5 BTC for unverified and 1.5 BTC for verified users. TechCrunch reported that more than 80 percent of Nano trading volume then ran through Binance, not BitGrail.^[4][3]

3. February 8–9, 2018: BitGrail Reports a 17 Million Nano Shortfall

On February 8, 2018, BitGrail abruptly suspended XRB trading; the next day it posted the notice that turned a price slide into a legal decade. Internal checks, the exchange said, had found "unauthorized transactions" behind a shortfall of 17 million NANO in the wallet BitGrail managed for users.^[4][3]

Internal checks revealed unauthorized transactions which led to a 17 million Nano shortfall, an amount forming part of the wallet managed by Bitgrail.^[3]

— BitGrail's website notice, February 9, 2018 (as quoted by TechCrunch)

At that week's roughly $10 prices, reporters valued the shortfall at about $170 million. Firano said the NANO had been stolen, only about 4 million XRB remained, full repayment was impossible, and the developers would not collaborate.^[3][4]

The Nano Core Team said it learned of the loss from Firano on February 8. Its preliminary investigation detected no double-spending, and the problems appeared related to BitGrail's software — a project claim, not an adjudicated finding. It described Firano's alleged proposal:^[2]

An option suggested by Firano was to modify the ledger in order to cover his losses — which is not possible, nor is it a direction we would ever pursue.^[2][3]

— The Nano Core Team, official statement, February 9, 2018 (archived)

4. Florence Rules: Bankruptcy, Not a Burglary Verdict

A court reportedly ordered BitGrail to halt operations in May 2018, followed a month later by seizures of its bitcoins; in January 2019, documents shared by a victims' advocacy group showed a judge ordering Firano to declare bankruptcy, forfeit personal assets, and return what he could — citing absent safeguards against repeated unauthorized withdrawals and undisclosed suspicious transactions.^[10][8]

The Court of Florence formalized the collapse into two linked bankruptcies: Webcoin Solutions di Francesco Firano, declared bankrupt on January 21, 2019 (RGF 15/2019), and BG Services S.r.l. (RGF 16/2019), owner of the BitGrail platform. Trustees Gian Pietro Castaldi and Tommaso Ariani ran both estates from a creditor portal.^[1]

A Florence Court of Appeal ruling, definitively confirmed per the trustees, settled what users held: deposited cryptocurrencies were managed "in monte" and "indistintamente" — pooled, without distinction, like a bank handling cash. Customers were creditors, not owners of specific coins; claims became euro at fixed dates — February 9, 2018 for the BG Services estate and January 21, 2019 for the Webcoin Solutions estate — with no interest.^[1]

The criminal track stayed at the allegation stage. On December 21, 2020, Italy's Postal and Communications Police announced fraud findings against Firano — accusing him of taking over customer funds before reporting the theft, keeping the breached platform running for months, and withdrawing 230 BTC, then worth about €1.7 million, three days before the announcement. The same police said the actual Nano thieves remain unidentified; Firano denied the claims and was not arrested.^[9]

It is not yet clear whether he played an active role in the theft or simply chose not to improve security measures after discovering it,^[10]

— Ivano Gabrielli, director of Italy's National Cybercrime Center, to Reuters (December 2020, as republished by ForkLog)

5. 2026: The 4.2 Million Nano Standoff

Repayment came in euros, on the court's arithmetic. Between 2021 and 2024 the estates ran partial distributions — the Webcoin estate's second plan paid 13 percent of allowed claims in 2023 — under a ceiling the trustees called the Limit: no creditor could receive more than 100 percent of the higher of their two allowed claims, and by May 2024 the trustees said almost all creditors had been paid in full by the BG Services estate — euro amounts fixed at 2018 and 2019 prices, not NANO balances.^[1]

The court fixed final-account hearings for BG Services on May 30, 2024, and Webcoin Solutions on March 11, 2025; those dates alone did not close the files. Formal conclusion came on March 16, 2026, when the trustees posted a notice whose labeled literal gloss said both proceedings were completed and officially concluded. The Italian original reads:^[1]

Si rende noto che entrambe le procedure fallimentari sono state portate a termine e risultano ufficialmente concluse.^[1]

— Bankruptcy trustees' notice, bitgrail.com, March 16, 2026 (Italian original; literal gloss in preceding paragraph)

Per BG Services' April 2026 statements, Firano regained ownership of 85 percent of BG Services' share capital and found roughly €100,000 plus about 4.2 million NANO in residual assets. The company proposed transferring the NANO in exchange for former creditors waiving additional ancillary compensation claims in civil and criminal proceedings; its April 22 clarification said the criminal proceeding itself would remain unaffected. Creditors' lawyers rejected the offer. The Nano Foundation answered that bankruptcy payments do not extinguish separate civil claims; Firano's side insists creditors received 100 percent of what Italian law established and stresses that no criminal conviction has been issued, with the proceeding still open. As of August 24, 2026, the record ends there: a concluded bankruptcy, an unresolved criminal file, and 4.2 million NANO inside a liquidating company.^[1][11]