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$400+ Million Stolen From Coincheck Cryptocurrency Exchange

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

takyon writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:If your gold is in someone else's vault... Re:If your gold is in someone else's vault... (Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2018, @02:30PM (5 children)

  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 28 2018, @02:30PM (#629454)

  What's not anonymous about a pseudonym that traces back to a throwaway e-mail account?

  --
  🌻🌻 [google.com]

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Touché=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Touché' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3

• An explicit record of your comments. An explicit record of your comments. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @06:25PM (4 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @06:25PM (#629527)

  You're identifying a corpus of data to process.

  Parent

  • Re:An explicit record of your comments. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:42PM (#629551)

    "Anonymous", You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

    (signed, the successful submitter at first attempt anon)

    Parent

  • Re:An explicit record of your comments. Re:An explicit record of your comments. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:59PM (#629557)

    and your ip is stored in a hash the server tracks, so unless you are proxying in a way that can not be easily traced back to you then you're still identifiable to some degree within the SN database. You're only anonymous to most users reading the page.

    Parent

    • "unless you are proxying" (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @08:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @08:41PM (#629566)

      You said it yourself.

      Parent

  • Re:An explicit record of your comments. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @10:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @10:06PM (#629604)

    If you want to play games, you can script your throwaway signin process and give misleading groups of data to look at.
    
    Or, you can use the Anonymous button when posting and trust the Buzzard et.al. have better things to do than de-anonymize your posts for pattern recognition analysis.

    Parent