Bitcoin Forum

Since Bitcoin launched more than $1.7 billion worth of Bitcoin has been stolen by hackers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5iCx8cY6l4&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5iCx8cY6l4&feature=youtu.be)

It's probably much more, many hacks happen to reputable companies and they're trying to hide the fact so they can keep their reputation.
The network is secure, but second layers (exchanges, storage services and others) if not made by the right people are always subject to hacking.
And some individuals just don't know how to keep their coins safe despite our constant reminders.

I think we need to do some research here. How much of these lost Bitcoins is on the exchanges. As we know, Bitcoin wallets cannot be hacked by normal means. In my opinion there are very few hacking events due to the use of daily BTC.

It's probably around like the number said in the OP, but I know NiceHash lost a lot of bitcoins too when it got hacked.

If only people knew how to keep their coins in their own wallets then this wouldn't be a problem at all.

Hacking is a popular incident through crypto's and counting them won't make sense because there's still money flowing to the market. And what'swith those youtube videos that you've been including with your every post?

What's the point of telling that there's $1.7B lost because of hacks? the banks has the most lost when there are hackers penetrating to their clients and steals money out of their own funds on cloud.

The videos offer an easy explainer on the subject to inform viewers. It's important to point out just how much has been lost in crypto hacks in recent years.

$1.7 billion of CRYPTOCURRENCIES have been stolen since bitcoin came into being. Not $1.7 billion of BITCOIN.

How many $ worth of paper notes do you think have been stolen since they introduced cash? How many $ have been stolen as a result of credit card skimming?

The overwhelming majority of bitcoin theft has been due to exchange hacks, it's well known that if you don't own your keys, it's not your crypto.

Some examples of that:
Mt Gox lost +$480 million bitcoin (Source) (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-28/mt-gox-exchange-files-for-bankruptcy)
Bitfinex lost +$70 million bitcoin (Source) (http://fortune.com/2016/08/03/bitcoin-stolen-bitfinex-hack-hong-kong/)

Also NiceHash lost $70 million bitcoin (Source) (https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/07/technology/nicehash-bitcoin-theft-hacking/index.html?iid=EL)


As for other cryptocurrencies:
CoinCheck lost +$530 million NEM (Source) (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-cryptocurrency/japan-raps-coincheck-orders-broader-checks-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft-idUSKBN1FI06S)

BitGrail lost +$150 million Nano (Source) (https://cointelegraph.com/news/strange-twists-and-turns-of-nano-and-bitgrail-since-the-150-mln-hack)

My point isn't just that it wasn't solely bitcoin that was stolen, but more importantly that these thefts, for the most part, occurred due to SecOps mistakes of centralized companies (most of which are exchanges). Sure there's malware floating around that might change a btc address when you copy/paste it, the solution is don't manually enter addresses, use a QR code or nfc or something else. Also stop storing crypto on exchanges and assuming it's safe, look at what happened to Cryptopia the other week. This will keep happening until people learn to store their crypto in addresses that they are the sole owners of. If everyone stored their crypto properly and stopped storing them in honeypots, we wouldn't be hearing about this all the time.

Exchanges are great, in fact, they're essential, but they're not banks, so don't store your crypto on them unless you're okay with losing it.

The problem is not with Bitcoin but with many platforms keeping Bitcoin especially the many exchanges who could not keep up with the security challenges which hackers are always exploiting. There must be standard along this line and maybe some certification so we know that an exchange is doing what they should be implementing along the security concerns. It is quite sad that with cryptocurrency, we are becoming the big paradise for hackers and scammers because these people find this industry more lucrative and easier to break. I am wishing for the time when these scammers and hackers can be stopped.

I think a lot more has been stolen. So many Exchange and ponzis around the world that were never "accounted for" and that no one bothered to speak. These Robberies happen every day.

Please put the word "billion" in the title

Only $1.7M stolen !! I think it is more than that you have said and referring from this video. Hackers are always trying to hack Bitcoin but Blockchain wallet is normally not hackable but if you do any fault, your wallet may be hacked.

You said $1.7M even though you quoted the OP and it says $1.7 billion

This is one of the reasons of why Bitcoin price and the whole crypto market plummet as we cannot expect that the hackers will hold their stolen cryptos for good but they will surely will sell those assets for cash immediately making the price of the market to crash. This is constanly happening since the beginning but still it seems that the exchanges ignored it or the hackers are just talented enough to bypass the exchanges defense.

you have got two things wrong here, first that these coins are not lost, they are stolen or hacked. second is that the value is mostly a guesstimate specially since price has been going up constantly and last time i checked they weren't doing a good job calculating the USD value of the total stolen amount based on the price change.

in any case this proves once again that you should not trust exchanges because they are either weak and are going to get hacked or shady and are going to scam you themselves

As bitcoin is completely dependent on internet connectivity, hackers find it an easy way to try the hacking tricks. In another use case, this being decentralized even a small bug leads to freezing of funds. It's highly risk involved and to the same exchanges and the blockchain networks were developing the security system better. Beyond this when something takes place we cannot blame the developers and the team. It is our fate to lose.

Not only hacking many ICOs are fake collected millions of money we cannot really conclude that most of this are really cause of hacking what about inside job? Some exchanges cannot provide liquidity to users and they are forced to close the service, some pretended to be hacked no one knows. 

Bitcoin is hacked before but I think bitcoin is more secure now. I dont know how hackers hacked bitcoin before and they get millions of $ before but we can secure our own bitcoin with some other ways if you are holding huge amount of bitcoin today, you can save it in a safe storage so you will not lose your bitcoin and hack by hackers

There are so many unreported thefts , and many personal thefts that are discussed in various forum but never accounted in any official report. The number can go much higher. As already pooya pointed, there is difference between the lost vs stolen. these all are stolen coins.

Yeah, this information is clear more. $1.7B includes other altcoins/ tokens. We can see that almost the money has been hacked from the exchanges. So I think we should store coins/ tokens in hardwallet or private wallet. That looks safe more.

I've also discussed this on my YouTube channel about where there will be a lot of hacking on exchange sites in 2018 and early 2019, so the video looks normal in my opinion, just saying a little that history always repeats with the same purpose  :-*

These exchanges should know that there have been many hacks in the past and that cold storage is a must. Minor hacks on hot wallets can be somewhat tolerated, but not multi million dollar losses

That is a huge amount. IMO, hackers will try to hack anywhere that has money. And crypto is a good target since it is easier to hack an exchange than bank. This is why we have to be careful and don’t store our coins in the exchanges.

Every year we experience big losses but the losses happen when some hackers stole our bitcoin. We really need to secure our funds and cryptocurrencies because once they hack your wallet there is no chance that you will recover it. For our security do not keep your cryptocurrencies in a exchange and its better to put it in a wallet especially hardware wallet.

It sounds like a shit tone of money, but it doesn't mean that the banks do a better job. He says that should protect the money as good as banks, and they probably do. It's hard to compare, of course, as the total amount of bitcoins is far less that the total amount of fiat. If we compare only the stolen sums, though, then banks lose more of people's money than crypto wallets do. You're saying that 1.7 billion dollars were stolen in 10 years. Take a look at this 2015's report about malware: https://money.cnn.com/2015/02/15/technology/security/kaspersky-bank-hacking/index.html. Approximately 1 billion was stolen because of it just as a part of a single complex attack! Take a look about this article on 16 billion dollars stolen in a single year: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/01/consumers-lost-more-than-16b-to-fraud-and-identity-theft-last-year.html.
People need to be more careful with their passwords and private keys is all I can say.

Mostly, they are reporting a lost if the bitcoin value is relly big but there are so many hacked account who were not reported.
There are so many hacker in this world and i think everyday has a victim. we should be more careful on what we are doing.

It would have be a good ideal if more research could be done solely for the purpose statistical data on stolen bitcoin by hackers from exchanges and also, for individuals whose hacks are well known to the public. This will enable us know the exact worth of bitcoin stolen.

This is one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies is seeing less new investors, they are afraid of falling victim to cumbersome loss due to the slightest breach of security, they will instead pay a fee to have their money secured by their various ginancial institutions.

a lot of people are careless and can lose their assets as much as it is a mistake of their own who cannot maintain their assets as well as possible, they are too curious to press a number of buttons that might have been set so that he becomes a victim of such hackers.

Yes, it is a huge amount. It is a pity that such situations occur, but it was obvious. Hackers could not simply bypass such an industry.Most likely, we will witness an even greater number of Bitcoin thefts. Industry is developing, hackers are developing.

This would go down as one of the numerous times hackers has attacked and made away with huge amount of bitcoins and this goes to rise the rate of security measure.
Hackers are modifying there plans and so we also have to follow suit to avoid this menace

You should edit the title of the thread and replace the word lost with stolen because these cryptocurrencies are still in circulation. If the hackers had a plan of losing the coins they should be sent to a burning address or make their own proof of burn but there's no reason for them do that.

If hackers are developing then the exchange's security will also be developing. It can increase but you don't see a lot of exchanges get hacked mostly it's an inside job or exit scam.

But I won't watch it.

Its due to the drought of their budget. They can't improve their security because of money, it's the first and main reason why some companies aren't willing to upgrade their security because of its cost. Security is the most expensive thing next to the system of the company itself. Next, they really has a weak security which made them confident before and didn't thought of such scenarios might happen.

We do not  understand anything at all. I was thinking about the other number. Please, more clear when you write down your thoughts. People simply do not understand anything at all.

If we talk about the exchange market, then it means, the exchange needs to secure their websites from any attackers. And if they can not protect their websites, then I am sure their member will leave the exchange and will find the other exchange. I think the problem was in the exchange and not in the personal because we heard any news that says exchanges get hacked and that is their jobs to make sure they can protect their members.

Indeed, at the very least only a very small percentage of funds should be held in hot wallets.

I'd prefer to see exchanges treating security like Bitmex: Full cold storage requires that withdrawals are not be available on demand. Withdrawals should be queued and manually withdrawn from cold storage. It's inconvenient, but when you consider past hacks were all hot wallet compromises, it makes sense.

The world is changing, and the digital world is more and more close to the lives of the public. Everyone's money, information and information are more or less equivalent to being stored on the network, while the frequency of cybercrime is more and more frequent and intensive. What a terrible problem it is that our assets and personal information can be leaked at any time.

The rate at which criminal are stealing from cryptocurrency now a days is really alarming something has to be done

Actually we need to do something good reason,how we can save our wallet.i think many hacker have in the market,and their always attack our (Exchange,bitcoin holding) everything.so we need use strong password,hide every information about our wallet. don't give us personal key,and mail account.then hacker will do not hack our money.

$1.7 billion bitcoin being being stolen since the advent of bitcoin that is a huge amount but my contradiction is is this total some the whole of the hacks that have happen to companies and exchange site's, because if it doesn't then the statistics is not yet correct their have being huge loses in the pass involving major exchanges both in bitcoin and all the other altcoins.

That's a huge amount of Money and I don't know whether it is true or not. Even if this is true, people may have a difficulty to believe this.

I did not know it's that small, I think with a lot of hacks happening int he past, it could be over that value.

Looking bad but that's what happen since we are still new and we keep developing, what's important is that hack has reduced as crypto continued to exist.
Nowadays, people already know that exchange are vulnerable to hacks, so they're smarter to store their money in hard wallet and avoid storing it in exchange for longer period. This is just part of the history, and it brings a lot of leanings to us.

It's true, computing all of those hacking incidents it will result to that amount and even bigger than that.

For the past years when crypto starts to boom, there's a lot of exchanges that were hack and assuming the total amount you really can't believe if that's a real figure but you have to believe that there's big money that were hacked.

I may have been worth 1.7 billion at the time of the hackings, the dumping of these coins would significantly reduce the market value. Just look at what happened to XEM after the big hack. It dropped from 2 USD to around 0.3 USD during the dumping.

It's still a lot of money, but the gains for the hackers are probably a lot smaller.

i think for some investor $1.7 billion is not much cause right now bitcoin had value $60,833,048,151. so don't panic about that hacker cause in this digital world so many hacker. so for ourselves, it is more important for ourselves to save our data so that it is not hacked

Though this is alerting but don’t forget that most of the cases involve are human errors means we are the one who is responsible for each hacking because we don’t use precautionary measure and by lack of knowledge about how properly used the internet,phishing sites and malware issues are the common reason ,if we want to prevent this then make your bitcoins more secure an safety

So once again, we need to be careful to save the coins in the exchange or another wallet because we are the owner and we need to give attention about this if we don't want to lose the coins. And if we can secure every wallet or account in the exchange, we do not have to worry from the hacker unless the exchange has a problem with their security. So far, we might see that it's happening in many exchanges and maybe they do not always check their security and searching for a hole or bug so the hacker can penetrate to the database.

yes, recently we saw the news about hackers, about people that hack the exchanger or hacking the wallet apps, and i think that it will be the lesson for the developer that develop the application, they should work harder to fixing the bug because it ill makes the bad future for bitcoin

For every friend I know, none of their bitcoin private wallet has ever be hacked except one that gave his younger brother his private keys. It's obvious that some exchanges don't invest much on security and this is a big concern for investors and the government, as much of these hack cases are exchange related. I hope this is handled in the near future,

This is not just today or yesterday,the amount indicated is for the whole bitcoin span in this community though I believe that this is only those recorded hacks not to mention the non reported incidents in which the victim don’t know how to address his concerns or some are in regards altcoins but still hacking issue

the said amount is already billion . we cannot disregard that event because that can affect the value of btc badly  . what i dont understand is why there were too many hacking hacking incidents happening lately  ?  hmmm ? is this a sign of something bad ? lets hope not  .


true or not true , this is something that is believable because hackers mainy attack crypto exchanges and bigtime accounts . they can stole much more money than that  .

It is unstoppable attack once the programs was interrupted by the hackers. I am not worshiping them but the fact can tell us about how genius they are by hacking the secure system. It is unexpected amount but we cannot retrieve that lost. The best thing to do now is to create new anti hacking program in order to minimize the damage.

That's not a surprise

As that's what you should expect from a poorly designed system which has no built in protection against hacks or thefts. I understand that no one may have expected Bitcoin to turn such a huge success (e.g. we all remember Linus Torvalds and his famous "just for fun" thing), but this is no excuse for not adding basic, if not to say primitive, options which would make stealing coins a lot harder if not prevent hacks and thefts in the majority of cases

In the digital world, hacking has often been heard. But does the crypto hacking information included in the video above need to be discussed? I don't think this is important because the amount of hacking that has occurred is impossible to return to hacking victims.

its impossible to hack bitcoin or exchanger without user permission. Nowadays hacker send malware or impress to click phishing site and they can access computer and hardware wallet. Another way, hacker always wait for any system bug or maintenance any exchanger this time they hack DNS of the exchanger and stolen bitcoin and altcoin. My account was hacked and lost 200+ coin and 2 eth+ and its almost 40k$ when ether delta hack because they hack etherdelta DNS and stolen asset from the exchanger.

Bitcoin currency is very safe so it is very difficult for criminals to break into bitcoin deposits, the possibility of missing is by going through several ways, one way that criminals often use is by cheating, giving promises that are very good and always offering big profits, but things like this are usually fraudulent, so the loss of bitcoin is caused by the owner's negligence.

It is possibly, because may hacker have in the Cryptocurrency market.their always try to many ways ,how can hack our wallet.so we need save password strong,dont tell your password for anyone person.and also do it 2FA verification.

well, I always see this on an exchanger who was hit by a hacker attack. the munkgin, not the same, but it's similar. I think there are some exhanger who also lose millions of dollars in their assets. maybe their defense is good enough, but hackers are growing fast. it might make us realize that upgrading security systems at all times.

I really hope that the perpetrators of bitcoin theft are not too quick to sell their loot at low prices because it will only make the price worse and there will certainly be more people who lose because prices fall deeper, increase security and don't be too careless with your wallet so that assets remain safe.

Mostly it's people's carelessness that allows hackers to steal their coins.  Exchanges are prone to such and whether we like it or not, sometimes good hackers can breach their security. That's why it's up to the users to safeguard their coins. 1.7 billion won't be the final digit for stolen and hacked coins, that's for sure.

Of course as a crypto enthusiast, you can really do lot of thing to prevent such hacks or minimized your risk like not putting big amounts of money in a exchange or protect your account at all cost.

But sadly, those hackers are always like two steps ahead of the game so I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers is close to $2 billion already. Just like what happened to Cryptopia wherein big money have been lost and that's just in the beginning of this year alone.

It might be true but bitcoin is still very much secure. I think there might some ways where hacking can be stopped like adding some updates to the bitcoin system. Like for example, If an additional security could be implemented such that transactions can be reverted back to the owner if the bitcoins are identified or reported as being hacked. I think this update if implemented could really help strengthen the trust people had given to bitcoin. We know there are some people who really had bad experiences about getting hacked and this could be one good solution.

Do you think that $1.7B isn't really much? even the greatest investor would feel bad for that amount.

Hackers are everywhere as long as there's something that they can benefit with. Back to the amount, $1.7B is hell a lot of money and don't think that it's just nothing for some investors.

Firstly, the figure of $1.7b is relative. As the price of bitcoin changes, so does the value of the stolen bitcoin. It might have been $1.7b  based on the date of the video, but that valuation will be fluctuating all the time. As regards hacking, a lot of it has happened on exchanges. Remember Mt Gox. And the rest? We can do something to safeguard against this - don't keep any significant amounts on exchanges. Move your bitcoin, or any other cryptos, to your own wallet. Hackers will always be there trying to hack and steal, it's a fact of life.

Wow that are huge numbers and these two groups are not yet caught, this what makes people fear to invest more on Bitcoin, and has been one of our problems ever since, it still haunts us and they can strike again or maybe they already hack some wallet but never reported the figure could go much higher than reported.

Variety of hacks, phishing and carelessness all cause stolen bitcoins.

Please be glad that the number of stolen Bitcoin still circulates on the existing Blockchain network. Having a large amount of Bitcoin that has frozen off its Blockchain network has reduced supply. Glad this helps us to own it still and glad you are not on the list of people who have  stolen :))