Mum's the word from Bittrex.

With the amount of money they make every day on BTS trading, we can clearly and unreservedly rule out good business sense as a reason.

That leave's us with just two primary possibilities: 1) they've lost their minds, or 2) they are extremely threatened and have decided to strike early while they think they still have a chance.

BitShares is their primary long term competition. There's no doubt in my mind about that, and I think they have concluded that their long term livelihood is threatened seriously enough by BTS to warrant a strategy that limits as much as possible any type of support direct or indirect of BitShares, and if possible, especially if it's an indirect "side affect", that even damages its competitor's good name.