Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday January 29 2018, @02:46PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday January 29 2018, @02:46PM (#629812) Journal

    They can indeed undo any transaction. IF 51% of all active miners - however that it parsed by the mutually agreed upon rules of the network - agree that a transaction or transaction(s) should be erased from a blockchain, then it is. And then all subsequent transactions (receivers) either A) do not exist/are also rolled back and are likewise purged which screws the buyers, or B) are allowed to debase the system.

    The security of the process is that you must get agreement from over half of the blockchain creators to agree to take out a transaction which was firmed up by subsequent blocks. That's so easy to say, just like "if all the countries in the world would throw away their nukes we'd have a nuke-free world! That's so EASY!" And since every transaction since that also forms part of the hash that verifies the overall blockchain.... not sure what that does but it is interesting.

    This is still more reliable than your bank, which is one entity which can decide if you get to keep your money you have with them or not by the pushing of buttons.

    --
    This sig for rent.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2