One of the biggest if not the biggest theft in history has supposedly just occurred, and its tied with cryptocurrency. At approximately 1 p.m. ET Thursday (January 25, 2018), $533,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange CoinCheck.
The Japanese exchange kept most of their cryptocurrency in a hot-wallet (Online), instead of a cold wallet (Offline). (Forehead Slap). Which makes it extremely easy for a hacker to steal if they wanted to. CoinCheck was basically asking to get hacked.
Approximately 500,000,000 NEM were stolen from CoinCheck. NEM's price floats around $1, in laymen terms, the majority of the cryptocurrency that was stolen was NEM. NEM (Picture Below) is a top 10 cryptocurrency based on market capitalization. A dip in NEM's price occurred right after the theft news was announced but quickly regained its value.
CoinCheck has promised to reimburse all 260,000 customers that were affected by the hack. CoinCheck promises to reimburse 90% of the amount lost.
It's important to keep your cryptocurrency as safe as possible. We live in the internet age, and thieves are getting smarter and utilizing the internet to steal, instead of physically having to steal. So protect yourself and either use a free paper wallet or buy a hardware wallet to store your cryptocurrency.
