Bitcoin worth $72 million stolen from Bitfinex exchange in Hong Kong
This article by Claire Baldwin for Reuters may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
"The bitcoin was stolen from users' segregated wallets," he said.
The company said it had reported the theft to law enforcement and was cooperating with top blockchain analytic companies to track the stolen coins.
Last year, Bitfinex announced a tie-up with Palo Alto-based BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security to store user deposits online, allowing for faster withdrawals.
"Our investigation has found no evidence of a breach to any BitGo servers," BitGo said in a Tweet.
"With users' funds secured using multi-signature technology in partnership with BitGo, a lot more is at stake for the backbone of the bitcoin industry, with its stalwarts and prided tech under fire," said Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of digital currency website CryptoCompare.The security breach comes two months after Bitfinex was ordered to pay a $75,000 fine by the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission in part for offering illegal off-exchange financed commodity transactions in bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Even the biggest lock in the world can be opened if you have the key. What’s inside is not influenced by that simple fact and neither is the supply of whatever it is. At over $500 per bitcoin the cryptocurrency has value and the blockchain equation solving process which mints bitcoins has real world applications because it is so difficult to tamper with. However the warehouses people use to trade in bitcoins do not appear to have solved the problem of securing client accounts and access keys. With such rich pickings they are targets for criminals, which represent a problem for investors seeking to participate directly in the market.
Bitcoin dropped back to test the $500 earlier today, which also represents the region of the trend mean, but closed well off the low. The price had rallied impressively ahead of the halving of the reward for minting bitcoins, which occurred in early July. With the halving the cost of supplying new bitcoin has doubled which puts at least some support under prices. As an asset, albeit virtual, in limited supply bitcoin has many of the same attractive qualities as precious metals and will require some of the same bullish catalysts such as acting as a hedge against debasement of currency to stoke a continued bull market. Meanwhile a sustained move below today’s low would be required to question potential for additional higher to lateral ranging.
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