$3 Billion In Cryptocurrency Stolen This Year. So Far. (cbsnews.com) 59
"Hackers are on a roll in 2022, stealing over $3 billion in cryptocurrency," writes Slashdot reader quonset (citing figures from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis). "And the year isn't over yet.
"For comparison, in 2021, only $2.1 billion in crypto currency was stolen during the entire year."
CBS News reports: A big chunk of that $3 billion, around $718 million, was taken this month in 11 different hacks, Chainalysis said in a series of tweets posted Wednesday. ctober is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go," the company tweeted.
In past years, hackers focused their efforts on attacking crypto exchanges, but those companies have since strengthened their security, Chainalysis said. These days, cybercriminals are targeting "cross-chain bridges," which allow investors to transfer digital assets and data among different blockchains.... Cross-chain bridges remain a major target for hackers, with three bridges breached this month and nearly $600 million stolen, accounting for 82% of losses this month and 64% of losses all year," Chainalysis said....
All told, Chainalysis said there have been 125 hacks so far this year.
"Cryptocurrency is not federally regulated or FDIC insured like a bank account," the article concludes, "which means if an account gets hacked, the government will not work to restore a customer's funds."
"For comparison, in 2021, only $2.1 billion in crypto currency was stolen during the entire year."
CBS News reports: A big chunk of that $3 billion, around $718 million, was taken this month in 11 different hacks, Chainalysis said in a series of tweets posted Wednesday. ctober is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go," the company tweeted.
In past years, hackers focused their efforts on attacking crypto exchanges, but those companies have since strengthened their security, Chainalysis said. These days, cybercriminals are targeting "cross-chain bridges," which allow investors to transfer digital assets and data among different blockchains.... Cross-chain bridges remain a major target for hackers, with three bridges breached this month and nearly $600 million stolen, accounting for 82% of losses this month and 64% of losses all year," Chainalysis said....
All told, Chainalysis said there have been 125 hacks so far this year.
"Cryptocurrency is not federally regulated or FDIC insured like a bank account," the article concludes, "which means if an account gets hacked, the government will not work to restore a customer's funds."
Consider This (Score:5, Insightful)
one and zeros. thats it, thats all. (Score:1)
Re: one and zeros. thats it, thats all. (Score:1)
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Crypto miners by electricity in bulk at the cheapest rates they can get. But there's a limited supply of the cheap electricity. When they're buying all of the cheap electricity you can't buy it. Or more specifically your power company can't buy it sooner or later they're going to pass those costs on to you.
Cryptocurrency costs consumers real money. Even if
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Okay FP branch, though I want to consider the "value" assessment. Where is that "$3 billion" supposed to have come from? And where did it go? Someone had the opinion it was worth that much when it was stolen? Or is that supposed to the value at the latest exchange rates?
I don't put much value on fools gold or fools' opinions of value.
But I have this great new algorithm for a new cryptocurrency that is a SURE THING to cause another YUGE Gold Rush! /s
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Okay FP branch, though I want to consider the "value" assessment. Where is that "$3 billion" supposed to have come from?
The life savings of "investors".
(Aka "the people at the bottom of the pyramid")
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Sort of concurrence, but I think a lot of it came from nowhere and went back to the same place. Like when the stock market "loses" trillions because the "market caps" dropped when the stock prices burped.
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If a thousand people buy a coin for $1, then some idiot comes along and buys another one for $1000, the people hyping the coin will claim the coin is now worth $1000 and that they've majicked almost a million $$$ out of thin air. Aren't they incredibly smart?
Reality check: All that money doesn't exist until the original thousand people have all sold their coins for $1000.
(which will never happen)
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Yup.
Re: Consider This (Score:2)
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If the cryptocurrency miners are sucking down all the cheap wind, solar and hydroelectric or even nuclear then
"Only" $2.1 Billion stolen last year (Score:3)
Something about "a fool and his money"...
Probably worse (Score:2)
And this estimate comes from Chainalysis, which has built a reputation for very conservative estimates of criminal activity in cryptocurrencies, so it's probably significantly worse than this.
It's way, way more than that (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anybody who bough it was hoping to do the same to those buying later. The only people that got screwed were wannabe ponzi schemers that were too stupid to get it right.
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Cryptocurrency has no inherent value when it's first created, but is assigned one by the creators. It lures initial investors with the promise that they can sell it to later investors for more than it originally cost. All the profits to earlier investors come from the investments of later investors. Eventually the supply of new investors runs out and the value crashes, leaving later investors to take the loss.
Cryptocurrency is a Ponzi scheme. The only thing new is that it's played out in the open. The
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the currencies themselves are mostly not.
Yes they are.
Did You Know - Digital Things Can Get Stolen (Score:2)
As with all new technologies, security best practices on the user level and the system level will only be battle proven by the people up to no good.
Nothing of Value??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And nothing of value was lost?
Exactly right.
$5 Billion in crypto has been stolen over the last 2 years. *BUT* that number is based on converting it into real money. Which you can't, because converting 5 Billion worth of crypto into real money is not actually possible. At best, you can convert a small amount into real money and *MAYBE* find someone who will give you some small amount of goods/services in exchange for a little of your fake money.
But, in reality. all of that crypto is not actually "worth" anywhere near $5 Billion
Re: Nothing of Value??? (Score:2)
Yet it counted on balance sheets as assets, which means it counted as growth of wealth, which means the Fed printed money for it, which means real assets went up in cost, ergo inflation.
... and nothing of value was lost (Score:3)
But seriously, how do you even define "stolen"? Some people wanted to participate in some fancy mathematical game where you can get ahead by throwing some serious computing power into it. And some people "cheated"(*), taking a peak when some left their data exposed or went and cracked some systemes to get a clue and get ahead in the game. Sure, that can be (or not) a crime, can be one much worse than theft (you wouldn't steal a car :-) ) but still, where is "stolen" coming from?
(*) note that as far as the game is concerned there is no notion of cheating, if they can fulfill the mathematical conditions that's it, they're a legitimate player with a lot of power-ups.
Stealing who again? (Score:3)
Who's into cryptocurrency? Scam artists and greedy suckers. At this point, with all that's been going on around cryptocurrencies and their "value" falling dramatically, there are no innocent victims left in that craptastic world anymore. If you're still in this game in 2022, you know, and I won't shed a tear for you if you lose your ill-gotten wealth to some hackers.
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Yep, same here. These idiots are doing it to themselves by greed and completely ignoring that there are good reason the actual financial industry is to heavily regulated these days. Nobody in the crypto-"currency" space is a victim. They are all perpetrators, some are just less capable than others.
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Who's into cryptocurrency?
SuperKendall.
Scam artists and greedy suckers.
Oh, you already mentioned him. Sorry.
3B of hot air... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not forget that anybody trying to cash out a larger amount will immediately crash the house of cards this whole thing is.
The cryptocurrency fad is dead. (Score:2, Insightful)
Zero Sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
I have zero sympathy for these idiots. They love to tout that cryptocurrency is "free from the guberm'nt!" and now they're paying the price for their stupidity. They love how it's unregulated, similar to gold in concept (except you don't actually own anything!), and hard to tax. Now, they get to see the flip side of that. Your money is stolen, easily, and no one is going to help you get it back nor is it insured by anybody. To bad, so sad. You hate the guberm'nt so much, or are so greedy, or both, that you go along with with obvious ponzi scheme only to have someone who hates the government more than you steal it all from you, whether from a hack or one of the real scam artists behind this cashing out before you. Suckers!
But, But "Fiat Cuurency!" (Score:2)
"Cryptocurrency is not federally regulated or FDIC insured like a bank account," the article concludes, "which means if an account gets hacked, the government will not work to restore a customer's funds."
That's showing The Man! Freedom! No regulation! Fiat currency! State monopoly! Abuse of authority! Shackles of government! Sheeple!
I am sure there are many more crypto-shibboleths that can be quoted.
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No that means the government won't PAY back the funds... something that rarely happens in any case. The government still has the same legal obligation to pursue and attempt to recover stolen cryptocurrency it has with any other property.
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The government still has the same legal obligation to pursue and attempt to recover stolen cryptocurrency it has with any other property.
Which is to say, none at all.
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False. Technically they can drop cases and don't have an obligation to protect citizens (disgusting imho) they do still have a mandate to enforce the law. Stealing cryptocurrency is no different than stealing any other property, it's illegal and the reality of stealing cryptocurrency almost certainly requires violating a whole host of federal laws.
Will they recover your property? Who knows. But police and feds do recover and (eventually) return stolen property every day.
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"The government has no "legal obligation to pursue and attempt to recover stolen cryptocurrency", or stolen-anything-else for that matter, in any given case."
Which is what I said. What is being presented isn't false, it is misinformation which implies stolen cryptocurrency is different than 'stolen-anything-else', including stolen cash. This is false. Stealing your cryptocurrency is just like stealing anything else and no more or less likely to be pursued by law enforcement than the theft of anything else i
Call it by its name: Cartel currency. (Score:3)
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Interesting.
I would expect that gangs fighting over cryptoturf is part of the action. I can't remember if I saw any headlines about that...I don't follow this that closely.
To paraphrase from today's MOTD: To be encrypted or not to be encrypted, that is the bottom line.
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Too true. Anybody who participates in the cryptoscam is a supporter of Russia and North Korea.
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What a shame (Score:3)
I have these three magical beans here, each worth a billion, they could have traded for it.
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You're not going to fool me! I want a picture of them!
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How about an NFT of them? I'll even destroy the beans for you if you want the NFT instead.
For perspective... (Score:3)
About $30 Billion was stolen in phone scams. That was just in the US unlike this global figure so it is a bit tangerines to grapefruits but you get the idea.
Ukraine defeats Crypto! (Score:2)
Zelensky can steal that much before breakfast. Crypto thieves are a bunch of losers.
"Stolen" (Score:2)
Except in the case of crypto, where it's both. The scale of probably has swung enough that it should be more than safe to assume that a significant chunk of the "stolen" crypto were planned cashouts.
no win situation (Score:2)
Stolen by hackers or seized by trigger happy governments.
There *is* no safe place in the world to keep your money.
If you get too rich the government will just confiscate it.
Clearly I went into the wrong line of work (Score:2)
What did you expect? (Score:2)
This will always be the case so long as cryptocurrency exists.
Furthermore it's wildly wasteful of limited resources, which in many cases are stolen in order to 'produce' it.
Anyone with even a partially-functioning moral compass or a
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