I keep saying this and will continue to say it until people understand.
Cryptocurrency is merely software and software always has bugs.
Governments try to stop people from counterfeiting paper money (and lots of other things) and that is only moderately successful. To the degree that it is successful, that is because it is hard to counterfeit money.
The same thing can be said for cryptocurrency. Counterfeiting it is hard.
Well, maybe.
Cryptocurrency “bridge” Binance (a bridge allows users to convert one cryptocurrency to another) was hit by an attack where attackers created almost $600 million in fake crypto (two million Binance coin) out of thin air – the digital equivalent of counterfeiting money.
Luckily for Binance, the hacker was not able to move all of the money off of Binance’s platform before they discovered the counterfeiting and literally turned off the platform.
They were able to block the transfer of about a half billion dollars but lost about a hundred million dollars, likely forever.
How they “turned off” the system was by calling all of the transaction “validators” – there are only 44 of them – and told them to suspend validating any transactions. That stopped new transactions from being added to the blockchain.
This attack is a little different than many. While it still took advantage of a software bug, it didn’t steal other people’s money, it just created fake money. I guess that is good. Only the investors are out $100 million.
Researchers say that around $1.8 billion has been stolen from bridges alone; $1.2 billion of that happening this year. Sounds secure to me.
Credit: Computing
How were they able to convince Binance that they had $600 million in crypto? They took advantage of an old exchange standard, BEP2 instead of the newer BEP20. What a difference a zero makes, I guess. Credit: Gizmodo
In more crypto (bad) news, crypto lender Celsius, who filed for bankruptcy, revealed the names, wallet IDs, transaction types, amounts, services used and quantities of tokens held. in a 14,000 page bankruptcy filing. While social media was not happy about this, I guess each customer is an individual creditor. I suppose a customer could say they don’t want to be a creditor, but if they say that, whatever virtual money Celsius held vanishes. The bankruptcy filing came after it was revealed that Celsius was $1.2 billion in the hole. Credit: Decrypt.co
Remember that, for the most part, there is no insurance for these losses. Customers only get anything back after these hacks if the companies can figure out a way to get investors to pony up more money. I think that is known as a con job.
Glad this crypto stuff is set to take over the world’s financial system. I think I am going to keep my money someplace safe. Maybe under my bed.
