$500 Million Worth of Cryptocurrency Stolen From Japanese Exchange (cnbc.com) 104
Locke2005 shares a report from CNBC: Hackers stole several hundred million dollars' worth of a lesser-known cryptocurrency from a major Japanese exchange Friday. Coincheck said that around 523 million of the exchange's NEM coins were sent to another account around 3 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET Thursday), according to a Google translate of a Japanese transcript of the Friday press conference from Logmi. The exchange has about 6 percent of yen-bitcoin trading, ranking fourth by market share on CryptoCompare. The stolen NEM coins were worth about 58 billion yen at the time of detection, or roughly $534.8 million, according to the exchange. Coincheck subsequently restricted withdrawals of all currencies, including yen, and trading of cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Locke2005 adds, "That, my friends, is the prime reason why speculating in cryptocurrency is a bad idea!"
Moron (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who leaves any balance of coins or fiat currency in an online exchange is a moron.
If you want to speculate, mine / buy your coins, store them in you OWN wallet, then move them to the exchange when you want to sell them.
Re:Moron (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone who leaves any balance of coins or fiat currency in an online exchange is a moron.
If you want to speculate, mine / buy your coins, store them in you OWN wallet, then move them to the exchange when you want to sell them.
I mostly agree with this sentiment. You shouldn't store anything online until you're ready to use, but what if I moved a pile of $100K worth of coins 5 minutes before the hack? These sites should still be responsible for losses.
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Use smaller amounts and multiple exchanges.
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Wrong comparison.
If I want to buy a TV (or car, or house, etc) using Bitcoin, I can do that right now, from my own personal wallet, without moving it through any exchange and with exactly ZERO risk (except for my PC being infected of course). Exactly the same as fiat currency. There are three major online stores accepting Bitcoin here in my country.
But in order to get involved in financial speculation (trading, etc), just like with fiat currency, you need to move it to an exchange.
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Traditional equities (stock markets/bonds) have well established and proven methods of maintaining accounts with reasonable security. These new fa
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But it's not even a zero sum game, because there is cost involved for mining, for the work involved, cost of infrastructure and so on. And on top of that, there are criminals that from time to time get considerable amounts of cur
Re:Moron (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of putting your money (or crypto coins) in a bank or exchange service is because it's become too valuable to keep on hand. Your advice to keep it in your own wallet makes sense if you have a couple hundred bucks in coins. But if you've got (say) $100,000 in coins, you'd be an idiot to keep it in your own wallet where a fire or burglar or forgetting your password could potentially cause you to lose the coins. We put valuables (money, coins, jewelry, important papers, etc) in a bank because they've paid millions of dollars to put together secure storage, and will lease space in it to you for a nominal fee.
The problem happens when you store your coins in an online exchange, under the assumption that because they're big and online they must have spent millions of dollars to put together secure storage.
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And what's stopping you from putting the majority of your crypto-coin into a wallet and then you know, ENCRYPTING that wallet with a good password. Then you can back it up everywhere and anywhere because it's encrypted. I back up my passwords to my email accounts because they're safely encrypted.
Re:Moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who leaves any balance of coins or fiat currency in an online exchange is a moron.
If you want to speculate, mine / buy your coins, store them in you OWN wallet, then move them to the exchange when you want to sell them.
Store where?
On your computer? Just wait for a keylogger virus to clean you out.
Offline on a spare HD? Hope the HD doesn't die, oh, and be careful a keylogger virus isn't running when you plug it back in.
Redundant duel backups in separate safety deposit boxes and a special offline machine with which to do set up the transfer? Sounds like a lot of work.
Oh, and make sure you can remember your password in 5 years.
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On your computer, in the cloud, etc. Just encrypt it and don't be a retard.
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You mean one with swords and the other with pistols?
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No, he clearly means seconds who can step in if the gentlemen is indisposed.
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You use words like "fisticuffs" and "ragamuffins", don't you?
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Fisticuffd you say? Probably means you are pushing in a little too deep for your partner’s pleasure. If in doubt remove your cufflinks you raggamuffin.
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If you do any sort of frequent trading, you need to keep it on the exchange though. Many exchanges charge withdrawal fees, which are sometimes quite significant. There can also be delays of several minutes or even hours when trying to transfer back and forth to an exchange, causing you to miss an opportunity. I don't disagree that you should keep them in your own wallet if you are just holding them though.
A very profitable business to be in it seems (Score:1)
Open a coin exchange ...and awkward to remove it
Make it easy to save your wallet
Wait till a few million/billion is deposited
Claim Hackers Stole My Homework (TM)
Profit!
what? bad idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
"That, my friends, is the prime reason why speculating in cryptocurrency is a bad idea!"
It seems that if this stuff is worth stealing, it has value. Wouldn't that make it a good candidate for speculative investment? Now allowing some half-assed third party to hold my investment in a way that could allow hackers to gain control of my funds, now that sounds like a bad idea.
If imaginary money is stolen is it still theft? (Score:5, Funny)
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y, I am missing a couple hotels on the Boardwalk!!!
Psst! Dude, want a really good deal on monopoly hotels? Theres a sale on ebay for 12 000 hotels for 960$ or best offer!!
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I found those and a black sock in my dryer with my laundry, are they yours?
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If so I'd like to report $15,140 stolen from a Monopoly game I own that's gone missing.
So, according to the exchange rate on amazon you suffered losses of about 20 USD?
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If so I'd like to report $15,140 stolen from a Monopoly game I own that's gone missing.
This post written from a laptop purchase with "imaginary" money generated by a computer purchased with more "imaginary" money that came from gaming rig bought for gaming but mining in it's off time.
I know it's supposed to be cute but it's really just more ignorant FUD by people too stubborn or stupid to understand how to work what's happening now and for the past couple of years. I'm sorry you're missing the down pour of "imaginary" money but enjoy your "imaginary" stocks or whatever you do to invest. Those
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Re:If imaginary money is stolen is it still theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now tell me, who and what backs cryptocurrency?
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It's less "who backs it" and more "who has the power to destroy it at will". When you lost the ability to convert dollars into gold suddenly and irrevocably, that was the "full faith and credit of the US government". The US Government can also print literally quintillions of dollars instantly, if they so choose. Most importantly, they have routinely found ways to control dollars that are not properly under their control with endless embargoes and freezes and threats. Bitcoin is secured entirely by the belie
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More often than anything's prevented cryptocurrency from crashing hard.
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You are somehow not grasping what the word "backed" means.
Fiat currencies are backed by nothing, hence the name "fiat".
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They're backed by the fact that you can pay your taxes with them, and so avoid an extended stay in uncomfortable accommodation.
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The word 'backed' does not mean 'you can pay taxes with it'.
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"Fiat" means authority. Which is what fiat currencies are backed by: an authority derived from force.
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That does not make them 'backed' ... get it: fiat money is not backed.
http://www.dictionary.com/brow... [dictionary.com]
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Sure they are. Try printing your own dollars and then tell me that the currency is not backed by force.
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When do you finally get it?
The are enforced by law..
There is no force in it nor any backing.
If currencies would be 'backed' by 'force', I could exchage money for 'force' at the central bank.
However I can't exchange them for anything, because they are not backed by anything.
If I would print my own currency I would be free to back it by anything I wanted ... if I and the users would accept the osts of backing e.g.
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So what is the law backed by?
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Depends on the ccountry.
In mine by courts.
In Somalia or South Sudan by guns.
Why that stupid question?
Obviously the word 'backed' has different meanings in different contexts like 'law' and 'money'.
Most certainly law is not 'backed' by a secure storage of a commodity, like a 'backed currency' would be.
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You should learn more.
https://www.quora.com/What-doe... [quora.com]
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Unlike you, I read lots of books about the topic :)
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The moment the government changed the rules, the dollar was no longer backed ...
Fiat money does not make any promises.
Re:If imaginary money is stolen is it still theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
No more imaginary than the fiat currency you currently rely on. None of it backed by anything other than faith, and most of it is just a bunch of 1's and 0's in your bank or broker's computer system.
that is completely false, like it or not fiat currencies are backed by the corresponding government and operate under financial laws of the relevant country.
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Oil sales are denominated in dollars. That doesn't mean dollars are backed by oil.
By that logic the Irish Punt was backed by Guinness.
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fiat currencies are backed by the corresponding government
No, they are not. Fiat currencies are backed by nothing, hence the name: "fiat".
operate under financial laws of the relevant country
Correct. But that is no "backing".
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It kinda hard to convince people that cryptocurrency is a “real” currency when even it’s fans compare their exchange sites to a casino. Just saying.
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Foreign exchange trading is also just like a casino, so I'm not sure why that matters
Expect fun malware in the future! (Score:2)
While malware scammers are focused on extorting people for cash by using cryptocurrencies (aka ransomware), I foresee the next iteration, a totally pervasive malware network that does only one thing: identify and steal cryptocurrency. Current malware has the problem of being easy to identify infected machine behavior but when the only thing you are doing is looking then you can spread far and wide like stuxnet, doing nothing but looking for something. Then when you they find your wallet, they just send a
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There is a new cryptocurrency called Nimiq coming out soon that’s designed to be mined with a Web browser using Javascript. It’s designed to be GPU and ASIC “resistant”, meaning that most people will be mining in with ordinary desktop CPU’s at least initially.
I can only imagine the various types of malware that are going to show up for mining that cryptocurrency.
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You can not write an algorithm that is GPU or ASIC "resistant", what ever that is supposed to mean in your nomenclatur.
An ASIC is just an algorithm "burned into hardware" instead of a flow of instructions for a normal CPU. You can put everything into an ASIC.
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Japan - same country that gave us Mt Gox... (Score:2)
It aint no fiat currency. (Score:2)
In no time, those millions will spring into action, find the perp who stole the money and restore the status quo ante.
You fiat currency believers need to file a case and wait for some government agency to investigate find the perp, and try to recover the stolen goods.
Er, what...? There is no real peaceful conflict resolution mechanism? Its finders keepers losers weepers rule from third grade! What! You gotta be kidding....
Exchanges (Score:2)
You know what I love most about cryptocurrency? It's decentralized!
Trading in Stolen Goods (Score:2)