19Nov/13Off
If Bitcoin Is So Secure, Why Have There Been Dozens of Bitcoin Bank Robberies And Millions In Losses?
But Bitcoin is not secure.
There have been dozens of robberies of Bitcoin banks and exchanges, and millions of dollars have been lost.
To put that in perspective, if robbers were routinely walking into brick-and-mortar banks and taking millions of dollars, with zero consequences and no arrests, it would make huge headlines every day. The media would be on high alert for the next heist.
But on the Internet, Bitcoin thefts worth hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars happen on a weekly basis and no one cares.
Here are a few recent examples of Bitcoin robberies, and then we'll explain why Bitcoin is not 100% "secure."
- The Chinese Bitcoin GBL went offline earlier this month, taking $4.1 million in users' accounts with it.
- In Australia, a Bitcoin exchange run by an 18-year-old user named "Tradefortress," claims to have lost $1 million of his users' money.
- Also in November, a Czech exchange, Bitcash.cz, declared that hackers had made off with an undisclosed amount stored in its users' Bitcoin wallets.
- In September, Bitfloor announced that it had lost $250,000 in hacked Bitcoins.
- Last year $228,845 was stolen from a trading platform known as Bitcoinica.
Read the full story here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-bitcoin-theft-2013-11?curator=MediaREDEF