Binance which is one of the biggest crypto exchanges is going on the offensive to prevent hacking after it suffered a scare last week. Hackers have in a huge way targeted the cryptocurrency market. Binance founder Zhao Changpeng has decided to face the hackers and is offering $250,000 payable in cryptocurrency for anyone with information that would lead to the arrest of these hackers who wanted to collapse the exchange. In addition to that Binance has set aside $10 million for fortune bounties. The founder of the exchange has also advised other platforms to do the same.
The exchange disclosed last week that some hackers had targeted it in large-scale phishing and attempting to steal coins. The hack was however detected before it happened and they have issued a statement that all funds are safe. Binance was, however, unable to reverse some of the trades from some of the targeted accounts by the criminals.
As prices of digital currencies continue to go up, the platforms continue to be targeted by criminals. This year alone hackers have already stolen tokens worthy more than $700 million from exchanges in Japan and Italy. These hackers have increased the pressure on the exchanges and even regulators to do something extra to protect investors’ funds.
If its regulations that are going to stop these hackers from running exchanges bankrupt then they should be in place. Exchanges like Mt Gox which was once the biggest in the world was hacked, and all investors lost their funds. Such cases have become very popular, and they are negatively affecting the market. Once hack leads to price drop which is not good for the market.
Several arrests have made before in conjunction with hacking, but this does not seem to deter the robbers. The decentralized nature of digital currencies makes it very hard to trace hackers since most of the transactions are anonymous.
I wonder if this will lead to a more decentralisation of the exchanges and to what extent that will actually mitigate some of these issues. Any ideas?