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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.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:38AM (4 children)
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)
It would be nice if all paper money transactions were traceable too. Down with anonymity!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:52AM (1 child)
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
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
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!