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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the keep-your-private-keys-offline dept.

There's a new contender for the largest theft of cryptocurrency ever:

A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange announced the theft Friday of $400 million in digital currency. Some estimates put the loss at the Coincheck exchange at over $520 million.

The stolen assets were stored in the cryptocurrency NEM, one of hundreds of digital currencies created in recent years. Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency, dropped precipitously on news of the hack but has since regained much of its value.

The incident could be one of the largest single losses of cryptocurrency ever, rivaling only the 2014 hack of online exchange Mt. Gox. Reports at the time put Mt. Gox's losses at over $400 million.

Coincheck says 500 million digital coins were lost. According to Cointelgraph, hackers stole the private key protecting access to Coincheck's accounts.

Does it matter that it was a $400 million theft if the value is going to collapse anyway?

Meanwhile, a stock trading app called Robinhood plans to allow users to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum without any transaction fees.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:31AM (9 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:31AM (#629376) Journal

    Are you telling me nobody has ever sold or traded "stolen Bitcoins"?

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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:38AM (4 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:38AM (#629377) Journal

    Are you telling me nobody has ever sold or traded "stolen Bitcoins"?

    No, takyon, he is telling you that no one should be able to. I know you are a fictional sub-atomic particle, but do try to be less dense, please?

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:44AM (3 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:44AM (#629379) Journal

      It would be nice if all paper money transactions were traceable too. Down with anonymity!

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      • (Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:52AM (1 child)

        by aristarchus (2645) on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:52AM (#629383) Journal

        Block-chained to your actual identity? Yeah, so now we see where the entire basis for crypto-currency lies: Train-robbery like the James Gang, with gold instead of paper with numbers on it. Ref:Season One, Episode one, "Firefly". This food-stuff is molecularly tagged, so you can't sell it to any one but crazy ladies on moons who tried to kill you before. Or, possibly, khallow?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @03:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @03:58PM (#629840)

          Are you saying khallow isn't a crazy lady on the moon that wants to kill us?

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 29 2018, @12:57AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday January 29 2018, @12:57AM (#629656) Homepage Journal

        I guess you've never seen our American money, our beautiful Greenbacks. Every one has a VERY SPECIAL number, they call it a serial number. If our money ever gets stolen, very easy to trace that number. And GRAB, GRAB, GRAB that money. When President Lincoln invented Greenbacks, it was hard to trace. But he knew that the age of computer, the age of robot, would come. Very smart guy!

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:50AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:50AM (#629382)

    Of course not. With trading intrinsic value is increased (if the traded value gets lower than purchase price, people have less incentive to sell as nobody wants to loose money), because money is stolen the purchase price is 0, so there is an incentive to sell at any price available (no loss in the first place). Of course, this is not the best strategy, but stolen coins can get too hot to hold (and of course the thieves want cold hard cash instead of cryptos).

    My point is the exact opposite. Thieves most likely want to get rid of them asap and dump at any price, this reduces value stored previously that was build up by trading. The same point why "HODL" is a bad strategy for a coin to build up value and increases volatility.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:57AM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:57AM (#629384) Journal

      Thanks! That makes sense.

      SODL

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @10:00AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @10:00AM (#629386)

        More like "cryptocoins have to roll!"

        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 28 2018, @03:17PM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday January 28 2018, @03:17PM (#629469) Homepage
          Get with the porgram - they have to RLOL!
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