Coincheck $500 Million Hack or Scam!?
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck said Friday that approx. $500 Million in NEM coins were stolen and transferred out of the exchange. Coincheck management stated that the NEM coins were stored via “hot” (online) wallet.
This is not the first time an extraordinary amount of cryptocurrency has been stolen from an exchange. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Mt. Gox hack that occurred a few years ago. In 2014 approx. 750,000 Bitcoin were stolen (hacked), a large sum of money at the time, but of course not nearly as much as it would have been at today’s Bitcoin price.
To my knowledge, there is no evidence to support an accusation of misconduct on the part of Coincheck, or the Mt. Gox incident, but it does make me pause for questioning. It is hard to imagine Coincheck being so negligent and irresponsible. It's no secret that by not using cold (offline) storage, you make yourself vulnerable to hackers and theft. Let’s just presume for a moment that Coincheck is not a victim but in fact the criminal, and the supposed “hack” is a cover. It would be next to impossible to prove, and little to nothing that anyone could do about it.
Regardless of who is responsible for the wrongdoing, each of us as crypto investors need to exercises a bit of personal responsibility. To protect ourselves, we should be taking our coins off the exchange wallets into personal cold storage for safety. Trezor and Ledger Nano S are both hardware wallets and are excellent solutions for this problem.
