Litecoin Mining Pool Disappears, Stoking Fears of Fraud

A litecoin mining pool seemingly pulled the plug over the weekend, stoking accusations of theft and fraud.

WeMineLTC, according to posts on social media yesterday, closed down their website and shuttered their Twitter account without explanation. Mining is an energy intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain, with new coins minted as a reward.

Previous social media posts pointed to a growing host of problems at the mining pool. Last week, a WeMineLTC user took to Reddit and reported that the site had disabled manual payouts, stymying their attempts to withdraw. A post on BitcoinTalk indicates that at least some users began experiencing login issues in late March.

One of the older litecoin pools, WeMineLTC had attracted accusations of shady dealing in the past. Back in 2013, users alleged that the pool's operators were misappropriating funds through inflated or fictitious hash rates.

At this time, the scale losses by users of the mining pool isn’t clear.

One user claimed that at least several miners had lost more than 1,000 LTC apiece – at press time, the price of the digital currency is roughly $29.

"We're 10s of thousands of litecoins at play," the user said.

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