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$31 Million In Tokens Stolen From Dollar-Pegged Cryptocurrency Tether
Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: All eyes may be on the meteoric rise of Bitcoin at the moment, but it's far from being the only cryptocurrency on the block. Startup Tether issued a critical announcement after it was discovered that "malicious action by an external attacker" had led to the theft of nearly $31 million worth of tokens. Tether is a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency formerly known as Realcoin, and it says that $30,950,010 was stolen from a treasury wallet. The company says it is doing what it can to ensure exchanges do not process these tokens, including temporarily suspending its backend wallet service. Tether knows the address used by the attacker to make the theft, but is not aware of either who the attacker is, or how the attack took place. The company is releasing a new version of its Omni Core software client in what it says is "effectively a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer."
Just because it is a cryptocurrency, doesn't make it proven like bitcoin is proven. All sorts of third party scams have been running using bitcoin from the fed raid of silk road to mt gox but the bitcoin system itself has proven solid despite being the tool and target of every hacker around the globe and no other cryptocurrency even comes close to having passed that pressure test. Your tether, ether, dodgecoin, pokemon-emo-coin whatevers might be digital currency with cool and snazzy sounding ideas but they are barely even on the radar yet and many of them have been riddled with serious flaws. Interest in them and their value could disappear overnight. It is reasonable safe to say that no matter what happens, bitcoin is unlikely to go anywhere soon even if it ends up eventually being used as a reserve currency for some next gen winner that handles microtransactions more efficiently bitcoin will still hold value.
"All that hashing to find a special result is a waste of energy."
That hashing isn't to find a special result, it's to validate transactions. "Cash is immediate." 80% outside the country of origin is also fake, all that "wasteful hashing " means there is no fake bitcoin... anywhere. Plastic cards also are not processed in seconds, those transactions can be reversed up to 90 days later that is a hell of a lot longer than it takes to fully process bitcoin.
Hell, I once worked a holiday season at a Michael's craft store and we had a couple hundred in counterfeit bills slip through a week even with UV checking and starch pens. There are no counterfeit bitcoins.
The system does however allow you to open yourself up to more risk of fakes in exchange for faster transaction times though. This could make sense in a number of circumstances. For instance those plastic transactions that can generally be reversed with no more than a statement up to 90 days after the fact. The merchant is calculating they make more offering the convenient and fast payment option than they lose to reversed transactions. Peer-to-peer transactions are often between people who know each other and/or who have recourse. Anyone you'd trust to write you a check can send you bitcoin with a tap that will get sync'd and validated with the network next time they go online. Even waiting one validation showing a random third party saw it in the blockchain is more assurance than you have that a wad of cash is real and seriously who is ever not connected anymore?