List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses [Old]

[Razick]

It's impossible to steal information, only to copy it.
Unless you take away one's ability to access that information, I can't see it as stealing.
Bitcoins are public information, because they are stored on the blockchain.
Maybe you want to protect private keys with intellectual property laws, but that would require some kind of proof that you were the only one to have access to them in the first place.
I don't see any other way to make "bitcoin theft" illegal.

Sorry, but it's theft. If you take, spend, or block access to someone else's Bitcoins, it's theft. I believe a US Court would agree if you could bring a good case. Research common law.

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[Rampion]

Not a single "thief caught" in all that list.

[Ente]

I don't see where Bitcoin is any different to money or apples. I am not allowed to steal neither of them.

It's impossible to steal information, only to copy it.
Unless you take away one's ability to access that information, I can't see it as stealing.
Bitcoins are public information, because they are stored on the blockchain.
Maybe you want to protect private keys with intellectual property laws, but that would require some kind of proof that you were the only one to have access to them in the first place.
I don't see any other way to make "bitcoin theft" illegal.

Aah, I see where you are getting at!
Yes, makes sense.

Not sure if "sense" applies to laws, though ;-)

Ente

[kcirazy]

... someone else's Bitcoins ...

Which court in which country is going to decide who is the rightful owner? Based on what evidence? And where should the "thief" be tried?
I'm sure that in common-law jurisdictions it can be considered stealing if the judges feel like it. That doesn't make it just according to other law-systems.
If you know how Bitcoin works technically, you can only come to the conclusion that it's not stealing because everybody already has full access to the entire blockchain.
Remember: There is no End-user license agreement on the blockchain. It's basically free to manipulate any way you can. People put their trust in math, not in protection by the legal system.

[dree12]

Trendon Shavers caught, charged for Ponzi scheme.

See reference.

Updated status of Bitcoin Savings and Trust accordingly. Also updated upper bound from 500000 BTC to >700000 BTC. (I consider "upper bound" to mean 90% certainty, not 100% upper bound). Added lower bounds at 150649 BTC, 192852 BTC. (latter as the differences don't add up). Deleted the estimate, which is almost certainly too low. The new information seems to indicate that a lot of redistribution occurred—some profited greatly from the scheme, so Pirate's profits alone do not indicate the entire lost.

[superduh]

way too many thefts! too many digital assholes

[dree12]

OP undergoing restructuring

The OP previously used BBCode to do all its formatting. While this was acceptable when the list was small, it has now grown unwieldy. References were in 50 separate formats, hard spaces and regular spaces were intermixed, broken tags piled up on the bottom, etc.

Luckily, I just recently developed a new tool to compile a simpler markup to the unwieldy BBCode. This tool, BBC++, is a superset of BBCode that allows one to automatically generate tables of contents and reference lists. In addition, it has built-in features for representing Bitcoin quantities with a narrow hard space.

However, BBC++ does not automatically convert "old" code to new code. Some conversions are obvious. For example, all instances of "old quotes" have been converted to typographic quotes. However, some are harder to find. If you see any stray "old-style" references in the descriptions, please notify me.

Just-Dice.com Incident added

After some deliberation, I concluded that the Just-Dice.com Incident met the definition of "major theft", as over dooglus suffered damages of over 1000 BTC, albeit temporarily. Consequently, the Just-Dice.com Incident has been added as the 9^th largest theft when measured by USD.

[btcton]

There have been way more than I expected...

[QuestionAuthority]

I was caught in a couple of these scams. Seeing them all together in one place is frightening. The amount of funds stolen in Bitcoin has to be proportionally larger than the combined thefts in any world currency. It has to be like 5-7% of all Bitcoins in existence have been stolen. It makes Bitcoin look like just a mind-boggling perverse stream of thefts since its inception.

[dree12]

I was caught in a couple of these scams. Seeing them all together in one place is frightening. The amount of funds stolen in Bitcoin has to be proportionally larger than the combined thefts in any world currency. It has to be like 5-7% of all Bitcoins in existence have been stolen. It makes Bitcoin look like just a mind-boggling perverse stream of thefts since its inception.

The reason is simple: we're not prepared. The digital world is relatively new to us all. But few of us worked in online banking. Few of us gave background checks for securities or traded penny stocks. The ones that did were drowned out.

The fact is: Bitcoin is not special. Just because someone deals with Bitcoin doesn't mean they can write a website in a week (Bitcoinica), give 7% interest per week (Pirate), or hash passwords with MD5 (Mt. Gox). Until the community realizes that this is still the real world, that work is needed to make a successful company, that "too good to be true" implies untruth, that backups need to be made on many media, that Murphy's law applies more often than not, and that security audits are all too important, this will keep happening. Luckily, we are learning.

[mechs]

Great list!

[foggyb]

I was caught in a couple of these scams. Seeing them all together in one place is frightening. The amount of funds stolen in Bitcoin has to be proportionally larger than the combined thefts in any world currency. It has to be like 5-7% of all Bitcoins in existence have been stolen. It makes Bitcoin look like just a mind-boggling perverse stream of thefts since its inception.

Point taken. But the nice thing is, it doesn't matter even if 90% are stolen. Bitcoin would still be usable. Furthermore, much of the stolen btc may well be put back into circulation at *some* point.

[beckspace]

I was caught in a couple of these scams. Seeing them all together in one place is frightening. The amount of funds stolen in Bitcoin has to be proportionally larger than the combined thefts in any world currency. It has to be like 5-7% of all Bitcoins in existence have been stolen. It makes Bitcoin look like just a mind-boggling perverse stream of thefts since its inception.

How much gold was robbed, taken, seized or lost in 5000 years of history? How many cultures were dizimated?

Since the 1900s the U.S. Dollar has lost 90% of its value through inflation, some people believe this is theft, also.

[mechs]

Most these bitcoins not gone and will  as eventually re-enter circulation once being laundered.  Bitcoins will become safer with time as the technologies surrounding it improve.

[Boussac]

Bitcoin Central & Instawallet security breach. More info.

Just so you know, your "more info" link points to a .com site while bitcoin-central is .net.

Also, since you were very prompt to include me (I am a co-founder of Paymium) under your strange "hacks , scams" title (banks are hacked all the time unbeknownst to you yet you do not call them a scam), it would only be honest to report the refund operations for instawallet and bitcoin-central.

You can find a handful of peole moaning on the forum but you will not find the hundreds that got their money back..
Transparency is good as long as positive information is not filtered out to leave room only for the bad press.

[dree12]

Bitcoin Central & Instawallet security breach. More info.

Just so you know, your "more info" link points to a .com site while bitcoin-central is .net.

Also, since you were very prompt to include me (I am a co-founder of Paymium) under your strange "hacks , scams" title (banks are hacked all the time unbeknownst to you yet you do not call them a scam), it would only be honest to report the refund operations for instawallet and bitcoin-central.

You can find a handful of peole moaning on the forum but you will not find the hundreds that got their money back..
Transparency is good as long as positive information is not filtered out to leave room only for the bad press.

Can you calm down? That text is not in the OP; it is in one of the live updates that are preserved for history. When the instawallet breach was first reported, there was mass panic. After it turned out that the breach was not severe and no funds were lost, everything calmed down.

Also, the intent of this thread was stated right in the OP. I will give you the benefit of the doubt here and chalk the misconception up to English being a second language. This is purely an informational thread. There is no need to report the refund operations because no money was stolen.

[Kuroth]

Bitcoin Central & Instawallet security breach. More info.

Just so you know, your "more info" link points to a .com site while bitcoin-central is .net.

Also, since you were very prompt to include me (I am a co-founder of Paymium) under your strange "hacks , scams" title (banks are hacked all the time unbeknownst to you yet you do not call them a scam), it would only be honest to report the refund operations for instawallet and bitcoin-central.

You can find a handful of peole moaning on the forum but you will not find the hundreds that got their money back..
Transparency is good as long as positive information is not filtered out to leave room only for the bad press.

Can you calm down? That text is not in the OP; it is in one of the live updates that are preserved for history. When the instawallet breach was first reported, there was mass panic. After it turned out that the breach was not severe and no funds were lost, everything calmed down.

What?

[dree12]

Bitcoin Central & Instawallet security breach. More info.

Just so you know, your "more info" link points to a .com site while bitcoin-central is .net.

Also, since you were very prompt to include me (I am a co-founder of Paymium) under your strange "hacks , scams" title (banks are hacked all the time unbeknownst to you yet you do not call them a scam), it would only be honest to report the refund operations for instawallet and bitcoin-central.

You can find a handful of peole moaning on the forum but you will not find the hundreds that got their money back..
Transparency is good as long as positive information is not filtered out to leave room only for the bad press.

Can you calm down? That text is not in the OP; it is in one of the live updates that are preserved for history. When the instawallet breach was first reported, there was mass panic. After it turned out that the breach was not severe and no funds were lost, everything calmed down.

What?

The quote from Boussac isn't even in the OP. He's complaining about something that's not there.

[sr_miner]

It is a great reference!
Thanks for keeping this list up to date...

 

[Rampion]

I would add Patrick Harnett ponzi to the list of thefts and schemes.