The Japanese cryptocurrency NEM was hacked. 523 million NEM coins were stolen from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, Coincheck. Coincheck was storing these NEM on a "hot wallet", which is another way to say that the coins were directly attached to the internet and apparently, vulnerable to an attack.
This is why I have stressed the importance of a hardware wallet to secure your crypto assets, and I just warned about this type of thing yesterday in a this post.
This equates to $534.8 million dollars or about 58 billion yen.
This is a very substantial loss and probably the biggest since the Mt. Gox scandal involving Bitcoin.
I feel bad for anyone that lost funds in this attack, but let it be a lesson to always secure the majority of your funds via hardwallet. There is no excuse to leave them on any exchange.
Let's hope that the hackers eventually get caught and that the people who lost their funds could somehow have them recovered one day. It isn't very likely in this case, but you never know if the thieves might have left a trail or if they are sloppy with their cashouts.
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To the moon,
I trully believe that even the simplest wallet (if handled properly) can give you more security for your coins, then anything left on the exchange. And i am not even talking here about hardware wallets.
The future is decentralized !
Exchanges including.
And this theft is a good lesson for anyone who cares about his crypto coins.
@bwells your reasoning is as good as mine...
We need security on STEEMIT.
As for your payout... As at the time you will be getting your payout an SBD will be $6
Yes, a word is enough for the wise. Yeah you actually talked about the importance of using the the hard wallet. I hope they recover from this immense losss
Me too. It is a sad situation when a greedy person or group of individuals does something like this. What's even more sad is the fact that they could have still almost definitely received a substantial payment by reporting the flaw in security and how to fix it rather than just stealing the money.
Is there a way to keep your STEEM safe?
the main thing that Steem survived this and did not fall
great information. love to read it
This is a really sad situation. But we were advised never to leave our coins on exchange sites.
Feel bad for anyone who lost
So it was the exchange that was hacked, not the currency. It is important to establish a difference as blockchains are important to be maintained unhackable for security of the whole market.
Would buying NEM here be a good idea? Or does this really hurt them? I can't really tell, the price has been dropping, but the project hasn't changed.
I stored in Cobinhood, Although it is also an exchange site I thought it is the most secure.It is personal opinion nothing else just trust.
Thanks for sharing this @bwells. I agree that it is sad to see so many people losing their coins, but I agree that storing coins on a hardware wallet is essential if you want to maximise security.
I have been working on reducing the amount of assets that I keep on an exchange at any given time, but at the moment it is still less than 3% of my total assets.
NEM going from a few cents, to 20 cents to $1.50 was one of the biggest jumps in all of crypto. I wonder what this hack does the the coins value and potential long term...Geez, $534 million is so much money...
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You told it yesterday why it is important to have hardware wallet and see today that's a huge loss more than 500$ million have been stolen
Just clarifying, an exchange was hacked right. The wording makes it sound like somehow NEM itself was hacked, which most likely didn’t happen. Don’t know if that would even be possible.
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So many coins got stolen better safe than be sorry later you have told to buy the hardware wallets its the right time for those who still have not bought
hardware wallet is a must to secure these incidents are increasing day by day
58 billion yen i just can't count that number hackers made everyone cry today
May be it would be more correct to say that Coincheck was hacked, not NEM?