Binance users were lucky, because the robbery was detected while it was still in progress. The staff moved in quickly and froze the wallets before a lot of the coins could be transferred to the mixers. Probably the hacker team was not large enough to steal coins from large number of wallets simultaneously. But this doesn't guarantee anything. One thing is very clear. Binance can be hacked and it has serious flaws as far as the security is concerned.

There are a few things to remember here.

1. The Mt Gox robbery was not committed in a day or two. It started sometime during 2011 and went on for at least two years. By the time it was detected (by early 2014), the thieves had stolen at least BTC650,000. According to the FBI, most of these coins were laundered using BTC-e.

2. The initial estimate of loss was BTC850,000. However, BTC200,000 were recovered from "forgotten" wallets within the next few days.

So if you ask me, I believe that there may be some more "forgotten" wallets holding the original coins from Mt Gox. But the big question is whether these coins can be recovered or not.

Already answered here:


We are now at 66.6%, and less than 1/10th of a percent away from the psychologically important two-thirds level. Altcoin market cap has dipped well below the 30% mark, and many of the established alts are below their major support levels. ETH is currently trading at 0.021 BTC, well below the support level of 0.025. Ripple has dipped below the 3,000 Sat level. Litecoin is currently trading at 0.0084 BTC, well below the support level of 0.01.

There is no end in sight for these exchange hacks. I am sure that this one was either an inside job, or a hack that was aided by someone from the inside. Else, how is it possible to hack a hot wallet which is under constant surveillance by the exchange staff? They should first screen all of their former employers, especially those who resigned within the last 3-4 months.

Since the coins are not yet listed, there is no way to predict whether participating in a particular bounty is going to be profitable for the participants or not. One option we have is to limit the participation to those bounties which are being managed by reputable managers such as yahoo62278. On the other hand, if a bounty is being managed by some noob or a junior member, then it is a big red flag.

The no.1 problem is that right now there are too many altcoins in circulation. More than 2,200 of them are listed in coinmarketcap and manymore are not listed. A conservative estimate maybe somewhere around 10,000 different coins, with the majority of them either dormant or dead. The market is not big enough to accommodate this huge number of coins. So only the top 1% or 2% are going to survive in the long-term.

This is something that I don't understand. Most of the times, the bounty pool is less than 1% of the total budget. If they pay a small amount of the bounty in ETH or BTC, the total cost is going to be a minute fraction of the total revenue. The developers need to admit that bounty hunters deserve good rewards. They work hard to promote these projects, and in the end they are being treated like beggars.

I installed the Veil wallet almost a month back (Veil 1.0.3). Till now, everything was working perfectly. But suddenly the wallet has stopped syncing. It is stuck at 96% (last blocktime July 8 20:40:56). I checked the net connection and firewall settings, and everything is OK. Can someone please help me so that I can sync my wallet to the latest block?

You have only yourselves to blame if you store the coins in exchange wallets and then lose them. More than 80% of the crypto-exchanges have been hacked at some point of time, and this includes all the major ones such as BTC-e/Wex, Mt Gox and Binance. The only scenario in which I would consider storing some of my coins in an exchange wallet is if the desktop wallet for that particular altcoin is very heavy and if the net worth is lower than $100.

You can't compare Satoshi with Euclid. The later lived and died thousands of years ago, and now it is impossible to find more information about him. But the case with Satoshi Nakamoto is different. There is a good possibility that the individual (or a group of individuals) who is known to us as Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive. Therefore it is possible to find his real identity.

Is it even possible to sell all those 980,000 coins in one go? I don't think that there is enough liquidity in the market. The prices will crash, and there will be a dearth of buyers in the exchanges. The vast majority of the coins will remain unsold (unless the whales decide to make use of the purchasing opportunity). BTW, what will happen to the forked coins in the wallet? I am referring to coins such as BCH, BTG and BSV. These coins are even more unlikely to be sold completely.

That depends on the coin that you own. You can't generalize the altcoins. There are promising coins among them, such as ETH, ADA, XLM and XMR. But at the same time, 95% or more of these alts are worthless copycats. So everything will depend on your portfolio composition. If you are so confident about their growth, then there is no need to listen to the others. I wish you all the very best with your holdings.

Yes.. the rules were written before the tournament began. But I have a feeling that the ICC never cared much to study them, as they thought that these rules will never be used. I talked to a lot of my friends, and I can honestly tell you that more than 80% of them were upset at the way the winners were chosen. In general, the feeling is that England stole the trophy and NZ deserved it more than ENG.

Once the reputation is lost, it is very difficult to regain it. It could have been easier to defend the ICOs, if only two or three of them turns out to be scams among the hundreds of new projects. But nowadays a solid majority of the new ICOs are being classified as scams. Under such circumstances, even the most dare-devil investor would think twice before investing his hard earned money.

You need to remember that the altcoin boom in 2017 was mostly caused by the ICO craze. So it is only natural that the valuations return to the pre-2017 levels once the ICO boom fades away. The major difference is that there are far more different coins in existence, than we had two years back. So there is greater competition for the same resources.

The truth is that the vast majority of the altcoins are over-priced. Many of the coins with just 0.1% of the user-base and acceptability as that of Bitcoin are having market cap in excess of $1 billion. This situation is not sustainable for an extended period of time. I am not saying that the altcoins will become worthless in the near future. But their valuations are going to get reduced by a great deal.

The problem is that there are too many desperate bounty hunters out here. Even if a group of hunters decide to boycott projects in which the promoters are too greedy, there will be enough people around to take their place. The system is also heavily biased against the hunters. Nowadays most of the bounties are not paying, and the bounty hunters are helpless in such situations.

Don't be so negative about all the new developments. The existing cryptocurrency users are not going to abandon their coins and shift to Libra. The centralized cryptocurrency from Facebook will be able to win the support of a huge number of individuals, but almost all of them are going to use crypto for the first time. And many of these users are going to shift from Libra to BTC in due course of time.

Mark my words. In two years from now, you'll say that Libracoin is the best thing that ever happened to Bitcoin users.

The problem with this chart is that it classifies Bitcoin forks such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) as altcoins. IMO, they should be classified along with BTC rather than being grouped along the alts such as ETH and XRP. Don't you think that BCH has more in common with BTC, than ETH? Also, it is unfair to classify the stablecoins as altcoins. They form another independent category of coins and they have hardly anything in common with alts such as ETH and LTC. So remove these coins, and you will get an altcoin market cap of 29%.

First of all, there is no universally accepted definition for what constitutes a correction in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin prices are very volatile, and they can go easily up or down by 5% or more in a single day. So are we going to label such regular movements as correction? IMO, to qualify for a major correction, the bear phase should last for at least 3 months.