Investing.com - It’s often said that the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make them transparent and ultra-secure. But that’s small comfort to those who have lost money due to crypto hacking schemes.
The largest cryptocurrency disaster to date took place in February, 2014 when the Mt. Gox (for VO – spoken as "mount gox") exchange was hacked and more than 850,000 Bitcoins, valued at the time at more than $450 million, were stolen. At one point, Mt. Gox was the largest Bitcoin exchange, processing 70% of transactions, but the exchange went bankrupt after the hack.
The second-largest breach was to the Bitfinex exchange in August, 2016, when 120,000 Bitcoins, then valued at $72 million, were stolen.
Unfortunately, hackers are not only targeting Bitcoin. Other cryptocurrencies have also proven vulnerable.
In July, 32 million dollars’ worth of Ether was stolen from unsecure wallets, due to a software breach.
And just this week, Tether discovered that $31 million in USDT tokens were improperly removed from their treasury wallet and sent to an unauthorized digital wallet. The funds were frozen in place and Tether is investigating how the theft occurred in the first place.
Cryptocurrencies are still a young industry, and the unknowns are many, making it impossible to predict the next attack. If you own any cryptocurrency, be sure to stay on top of security updates and best practices to secure your coins!