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Youbit Shuts Down Cryptocurrency Exchange After Second Hack, Files For Bankruptcy (bbc.com)
phalse phace writes: After experiencing another hack, South Korean crypto-currency exchange Youbit has closed their doors and is filing for bankruptcy. BBC reports: "Youbit, which lets people buy and sell bitcoins and other virtual currencies, has filed for bankruptcy after losing 17% of its assets in the cyber-attack. It did not disclose how much the assets were worth at the time of the attack. In April, Youbit, formerly called Yapizon, lost 4,000 bitcoins now worth $73 million to cyberthieves. South Korea's Internet and Security Agency (Kisa) which investigates net crime, said it had started an enquiry into how the thieves gained access to the exchange's core systems. Kisa blamed the earlier attack on Youbit on cyber-spies working for North Korea. Separate, more recent, attacks on the Bithumb and Coinis exchanges, have also been blamed on the regime. No information has been released about who might have been behind the latest Youbit attack. In a statement, Youbit said that customers would get back about 75% of the value of the crypto-currency they have lodged with the exchange."
tl;dr, Bitcoin is only useful for money laundering? Oh and fleecing rubes.
Except that every transaction ever is stored in the blockchain so it's even sketchy to use for money laundering.
Bitcoin really has no reason to exist other than to fleece rubes.
Not even trolling.
Bitcoin's Rise May Reflect a Monumental Transfer of Trust From Human Institutions Backed By Gov't To Systems Reliant on Well-Tested Code, Says Tim Wu (see a couple of posts down)
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
From the onset, I wanted to like the idea of a non-governmental currency that had a cash-like anonymity, even though a lot of informed folks likened it to a Ponzi scheme.
Beginning with the Mt. Gox debacle though, this now rather routine loss of millions by an exchange is where I lost faith in the Bitcoin as an investment option and an alternative to government issued fiat currency.
This is why we can't have nice things
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I have now seen multiple stories of crypto-currencies getting stolen or exchanges hacked. Then I read about how blockchain is supposed to be the end all, be all, of transaction security. Aren't these things connected at some level? What am I missing? How can something that is supposed to so hack resistance as blockchain allow for the common theft of crypto-currencies?
This is not a facetious question. It seems like the press (old man here, so using an old man term for everything in the public I read) is either breathlessly in awe of this stuff or telling me that someone just lost millions of dollars. I honestly don't know what to believe.
step 1: open a random internet coin exchange
step 2: sell random coins for real money or just tell people they own random coins in exchange for real money
step 3: claim you are âoehackedâ
step 4: walk away with real money
how do people not understand this
In the US the FDIC would cover losses up to 250K
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Some of these dopey admins need to learn how to lock down a server.
"customers would get back about 75% of the value of the crypto-currency they have lodged with the exchange."
So their customers are back to where they were a week ago?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That's not quite true. People keep forgetting that it's easy to transfer an entire wallet while leaving no trace, and opening a new wallet isn't that big a penalty.
This is how you will lose your life savings and the mortgage you took out to buy e-Tulips hoping someone else will be the greater fool.
Sell now.
You've been warned. These stories will only become more and more frequent as the exchanges have to invent "hacks" to cover up their ponzi schemes that have been inflating the value of cryptocurrencies.
No way, brah! Bitcoin is the "real deal" and I'm going "all in"! You gotta bitcoin a bitcoin to really bitcoin bitcoin bitcoin bitcoin! I'm "hip" to the "phat lingo" and that is no lie my brother! I made hundreds of thousands bitcoining a bitcoin and you can too! Just "roll" with your "homies" and "mine" all the bitcoins! All the "hep cats" are doing this "swingin" new trend! I am "joe normal" and totally a real person and not pushing a scammy pump-and-dump! Sick whooooa!
If these exchanges are continually getting "robbed" by North Korea, how is Bitcoin not simply a money laundering scheme for North Korea?
Seriously, most targets, including banks, do not get successfully compromised only because nobody competent tries. All these bullshit hype exchanges were built fast, cheaply and motivated primarily by greed going strong and are very juicy targets, because unlike with basically all other targets, you can actually steal things directly over the Internet from them that are a (not very good, but still) approximation to money.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Shouldn't the blockchain be the ultimate source of truth abou who owns a bitcoin (subdivision) and shouldn't it show an immutable history of who owned a certain piece of it and where did it come from?
If yes, then what do you do with stolen bitcoin? How will any of your subsequent transactions be validated if you appear to use bitcoin which are not listed as yours?
I hope people are not simply exchanging wallets as they would image files, right?
If you want mine your own cryptocurrency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.
yes but you can trace that transfer, it is public