Crypto Hacks

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Coincheck Inc. was the latest cryptocurrency exchange that was hacked. The hacker stole 523 million assets of the coin called NEM, valued at $530 million USD. This is the largest theft of cryptocurrencies in the world in the 9 years of bitcoin exchanges. This tops the fellow Japanese company, Mt. Gox, which was hacked and led to its demise. $450 million worth of bitcoin from the price in 2014 were stolen, but today those $450 million would have been worth exponentially more. Cyber security experts say that Coincheck was hacked because they didn’t have a simple security check called multisignature.

This latest hack just reinforces people’s skeptical view of investing in cryptocurrencies. The price volatility of these currencies is ridiculous, and if you aren’t careful you can lose a ton of money in the blink of an eye. Now more people will probably invest in those offline crypto wallets to add to the protection of just storing their coins on the exchange.

Coincheck does not know who stole the NEM coins yet or even what country the thief is from. They aren’t even sure that investors will be able to get their money back, something that might put Coincheck under. Hopefully these investors will be able to get refunded or else this will put the cryptocurrency exchanges in a bad light.

Sources:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-worth-530-million-missing-from-japanese-exchange-1516988190

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