Crypto exchange hacks

Throughout these ten years of crypto revolution, many exchange hacks have occurred and millions of dollars have been stolen.

Because of this, we’re going to discuss some of the largest crypto exchange hacks in the last decade.

1.  Mt. Gox

Mt. Gox, a Japan-based crypto coin exchange, was launched in 2010 by Jed McCaleb. In a span of three years, the exchange became the biggest one in the world managing over 70 percent of Bitcoin transactions worldwide.

In 2011, Mt. Gox was sold to Mark Karpeles, however, McCaleb was still involved. In June of the same year, the Bitcoin price on the exchange’s website decreased to one cent because of a security issue. Allegedly, a hacker transferred Bitcoins to himself illegally causing the price drop. The price went back to normal shortly after, however, almost $9 million was stolen from the exchange.

In February 2014, Bitcoin withdrawals from Mt. Gox were stopped. The exchange issued many press releases but the situation wasn’t fixed. A couple of weeks later a leaked document displayed that throughout the years, Mt. Gox had lost almost 850,000 BTCs. The company filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after.

2.  Vircurex

Vircurex is a crypto exchange founded in 2011 and is based in Beijing, China. In 2013, the exchange suddenly put crypto transactions to stop after two hacks. Customer withdrawals were immediately frozen. The company tried to repay affected users in order to not end up like Mt. Gox. Crypto coins worth nearly $50 million were stolen from Vircurex.

3.  Bitfinex

Bitfinex is a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2012  that had several issues with hacks in the past. After Mt. Gox, Bitfinex became the most widely used crypto coin exchange

In 2015, the exchange infamously lost around $400 thousand dollars as well as $73 million next year. The exchange had many other issues later on. Despite all of that, it is still working to this day and is the 26th exchange in terms of volume.

4.  Coinchecker

This crypto exchange/wallet was founded in 2014 in Tokyo by Koichiro Wada and Yusuke Otsuka. The company was sold to Monex Group for $3.4 billion.

Coinchecker was hacked at the beginning of 2018 and NEM tokens worth $530 million were missing. The coins were transferred through 19 accounts. Later on, Coinchecker announced that it would pay back to the affected 260 thousand users.

5.  Binance

Binance is currently the most popular crypto exchange in the world. It was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao in China, however, it moved to Japan after China’s domestic exchange ban.

In May 2019, the exchange announced that it had lost 7,000 BTCs that are currently worth more than $83 million. The CEO of the exchange said that the hackers employed multiple skills and the transaction was made in a way to pass their existing security.

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