Billions stolen from South Korean Bitcoin exchange

[shinratensei_]

Bithumb, the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange in the world was recently hacked resulting in Billions of Won being stolen.

Read more: https://blog.coinspectator.com/2017/07/04/billions-stolen-from-south-korean-bitcoin-exchange/

Did you mean about billion worth of won?  The title of that news seems like a click bait to encourage the more people and their curiosity. I don't take it for seriously but it's bad to see another exchange gets broken again. But remember I can't Lambo with below than 1 million dollars.
I just careful with their security, that makes them must upgrade the security.

[richardsNY]

Its small exchange, and the number of Bitcoin lost is not so big.

Main point of importance is that while these coins aren't anything significant in quantity here in the western world, it is quite a bitter pill to swallow for that exchange. Don't forget that South Korea is an upcoming country -- if more hacks follow, and that is a very likely scenario, the coin quantities that these exchanges are losing due to hacks will only increase. It's just a matter of time....

[jekjekman]

With this being happened the investor or korean people that is investing and trading with Bitcoin will halt I think because they will lose confidence with this hacking incident even though the company will refund the losses.

[Doms]

Could have been another inside job here. But the lesson should be that tighter cyber securities should be in place to avoid such a thing from happening again. And for the users to not put a huge amount of money on these exchanges when you know the risk that any site is hackable nowadays. Should be anotherc lesson learned for a lot of people.

[timerland]

Bithumb, the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange in the world was recently hacked resulting in Billions of Won being stolen.

Read more: https://blog.coinspectator.com/2017/07/04/billions-stolen-from-south-korean-bitcoin-exchange/

It's funny how every single exchange claim that they are the number one most secure bitcoin exchange but really every single time there is a hack happening that the users have to take money out of their own pockets to compensate for.

This is a major loss indeed and it would be interesting what the hacker does to this money. I think it is unlikely that he will sell off the bitcoins at all because that means potentially having the coins confiscated by law enforcement, so i don't think that we need to panick this much about the prospect of the hacker dumping the coins, driving the price of bitcoin down.

Exchanges should make a clear in an event of a hack, who will be responsible and how will users be compensated. A lot of exchanges don't even have that in their terms and conditions leaving them to do whatever they want.

[Sithara007]

With this being happened the investor or korean people that is investing and trading with Bitcoin will halt I think because they will lose confidence with this hacking incident even though the company will refund the losses.

Every single incidence of hacking is a major setback to the widespread adoption and user-expansion of Bitcoin. The same happened after Mt Gox crashed and Mark Karpeles ran away with the money from all the users.

[pooya87]

With this being happened the investor or korean people that is investing and trading with Bitcoin will halt I think because they will lose confidence with this hacking incident even though the company will refund the losses.

Every single incidence of hacking is a major setback to the widespread adoption and user-expansion of Bitcoin. The same happened after Mt Gox crashed and Mark Karpeles ran away with the money from all the users.

not really!
any hack happens only to exchanges and possibly some small third parties, and first of all it is their own mistake and it could have happened to anything other than bitcoin. secondly it only affects traders and that has nothing to do with bitcoin's adoption.

[Netnox]

not really!
any hack happens only to exchanges and possibly some small third parties, and first of all it is their own mistake and it could have happened to anything other than bitcoin. secondly it only affects traders and that has nothing to do with bitcoin's adoption.

Traders play a very important role in Bitcoin. They pump a lot of money in to the crypto-currencies, and a lot of ventures (especially the exchanges and investment sites) survive thanks to them. If the traders lose their money, it is not going to be good for Bitcoin. If they lose their investment in trading it is still OK. But robbery is never going to be good for anyone.

[Mazt rhiezt]

not really!
any hack happens only to exchanges and possibly some small third parties, and first of all it is their own mistake and it could have happened to anything other than bitcoin. secondly it only affects traders and that has nothing to do with bitcoin's adoption.

Traders play a very important role in Bitcoin. They pump a lot of money in to the crypto-currencies, and a lot of ventures (especially the exchanges and investment sites) survive thanks to them. If the traders lose their money, it is not going to be good for Bitcoin. If they lose their investment in trading it is still OK. But robbery is never going to be good for anyone.

Savings in exchange are very practical for trading but also very risky.
Sleeping soundly offline is the right step to maintain balance and give a little flake to the exchange is the best solution.

[~Bitcoin~]

With this being happened the investor or korean people that is investing and trading with Bitcoin will halt I think because they will lose confidence with this hacking incident even though the company will refund the losses.

Company will refund the losses? Where you got that information, I have read that they will only pay small amount to compensate loss of personal information which could be way lower than what actually they have lost.

Korean people will learn to not have all their bitcoins in exchange platform with this incident, rather than losing confidence in bitcoin trading. 

[btcney]

Bithumb, the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange in the world was recently hacked resulting in Billions of Won being stolen.

Read more: https://blog.coinspectator.com/2017/07/04/billions-stolen-from-south-korean-bitcoin-exchange/

Wow, this is probably bigger news than a lot of peop would expect in my opinion because Bithumb basically rules over the entire Korean market and now that the Korean government is pledging to regulate the bitcoin industry in that country its volume is only going to climb on the charts.

What strikes me the most is that such a big exchange can still have security issues. I mean, most of us here just use a trezor and everything is fine, never gotten hacked or anything. It's either very stupid mistakes made by the security team(not putting coins into cold storage etc.) or it's an insider job(more likely).

Anyone else noticed this?

Bithumb have promised to compensate its users for loss of personal information amounting to $870 per user (despite losses exceeding this amount), although the company is still investigating and has also hinted at further damages being announced.

So are they saying that actual losses weren't compensated, only $870 however big an amount you had on deposit? Or is this $870 extra for every verified user?

[Wind_FURY]

1,000,000,000 Won = $875,853.23 = ~330BTC

this is not even in the top 20 exchange hacks in the history of bitcoin
this is more like the amount that some whales lose if they have a bad trading day...

My initial reaction in seeing the word billions in the title was "wtf!?". Upon clicking the topic, it is not even 1/2 of the largest hacks in Bitcoin or all of crypto for the matter. The hacker can dump all coins in the market anytime, no problem.

It is a clickbait title. Moving on.

[Welshmaiden]

Personally I wouldn't put it past the North Korean regime either. The normal people have very limited internet. But the regime has got full internet and have groups of hackers. The North Koreans where main suspect for the ransomware attacks. They need the money as they are sanctioned. They will try anything to raise money for there missiles.

[iamTom123]

This is why storing or putting some of our bitcoins that we cannot afford to lose in some bitcoin exchange is a very risky move for a bitcoin user because it will not help you to secure your bitcoin but to risk it because big amounts of money worth of bitcoin in an exchange is such an attractive for hackers or those people who will do illegal things just for money.

Leaving a large amount of Bitcoin or any altcoins for that matter in an exchange can indeed be risky because these exchanges are always identified by hackers and so they are always easy target. Now, it is always the responsibility of the exchange to make sure that their security is not easily penetrable by perpetrators.

Just put right amount of Bitcoin in an exchange for your trading activities and withdraw excess coins to your other wallets. I am sure that this incident will not be the last...and with hackers always at the top of the game we can see similar stories in the coming months. Fortification is at the top priority for an exchange inorder to survive in a harsh world we are in.

[Vishnu.Reang]

Savings in exchange are very practical for trading but also very risky.

I don't understand why people keep their coins in exchanges. If it is for trading purposes, then they should immediately withdraw the coins once the trading session is finished. But many people keep their coins in exchanges for long duration, as evident from the Bithumb hack.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Savings in exchange are very practical for trading but also very risky.

I don't understand why people keep their coins in exchanges. If it is for trading purposes, then they should immediately withdraw the coins once the trading session is finished. But many people keep their coins in exchanges for long duration, as evident from the Bithumb hack.

As you know, trading is unpredictable, the price could change every time, how the traders could make a profit if they always withdraw their coins? Just use your logic, the only most efficient way is to keep it on the exchange.
Just hoping that there'll be a really good decentralised exchange but let's come back to the reality.
Even if so many people have recommended to not keep your money in an exchange, it's still a hard thing to do because of many factors.
By the way, there's no such thing as "trading session is finished", trading is always taking advantage of the circumstance.

[buwaytress]

Billions stolen from South Korean Bitcoin exchange

Billions won only counts around $1 million so actual loss is less than a million which might not cause any panic or dump in market.

Bithumb have promised to compensate its users for loss of personal information amounting to $870 per user

This is quite confusing, they have promised to give only $870 for loss of personal information but haven't mentioned anything about how they gonna refund their users for loss of their bitcoins.  

Globally bad news, but locally in RoK, this is sure to hit them hard. They were already paying premium prices for Bitcoin for months since the bull run so reputation-wise, not great.

First I've heard about compensation for loss of data, at 1,000 users, they'll have to pay out about as much as they lost already in Bitcoin. I wonder if users with 0 balance would still qualify.

[Amph]

I expected such great hack will drop the price for bitcoin and other crypto at the same time, but i don't see the price has changed. In the past such hackings affected exactly like that. What's the difference now?

Its small exchange, and the number of Bitcoin lost is not so big.

not at all it's not small it's the first exchange in the world by voluem go check coinmarketcap, 24 hours volume, it's ranked 1, but still the 300 btc amount is negligeable, and not worth mentioning

every day there are whales, that dump 1000 btc and they are worried for a tiny 300 btc, i think they are joking, the value is evne increased yesterday...

[onrise]

Its really bad to hear about such a huge bct stolen that too from a well secured exchange. i hope somehow they will be able to identify the culprit and get back those stolen btc. Hope it does not create a panic among its users and start withdrawing funds from their exchanges.

[aTriz]

Bithumb, the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange in the world was recently hacked resulting in Billions of Won being stolen.

Read more: https://blog.coinspectator.com/2017/07/04/billions-stolen-from-south-korean-bitcoin-exchange/

I'm really surprised at the fact that they are one of the leading exchanges in terms of volume not only in UKorea but rather in the entire world and they still can't afford apparently to get a cold storage going on to prevent these sorts of hacks. I mean storing in hot wallet is convenient, but how is it wise to store so much bitcoin in hot storage? IT just seems to be very bad management to me.

The price doesn't seem to be negatively affected by this, nor the Bithumb exchange. I wonder if they decide to release the wallet address to the public because then we can see if he transfers the coins to an exchange to cash it out(if he isn't smart enough to use a mixer, that is).

On a side note: Bithumb prices are still consistently +100 USD from the rest of the exchanges.