So today I saw something that really surprised me. After the historical NEM (XEM) hack, which happened ot the 26. of January and was the biggest cryptocurrency theft of all time - the total amount of funds stolen was around 534 mln $. CoinCheck, the hacked exchange admits that the stolen coins were stored on a single-signature hot wallet with considerably low security. After the news broke I saw that decentralized exchange platforms - Bitshares, AirSwap, Kyber Network were all up over 10% this i a sign that the crypto market is getting more and more sophisticated. ( Decentralized exchanges can't be hacked, can't be banned, can't be manipulated. They are the logical replacement of centralized exchanges)
Full Refund From CoinCheck
The markets did react to the news as it was a reminder for Mt.Gox bancrupcy, however panic was pretty short-lived and things looked very good towards the end of the trading day. On 27.01 morning, CoinCheck issued a statement that they are going to issue a REFUND to all of the 260,000 affected accounts. Oh, another thing is that they are going to pay for it from their personal funds.
To be honest that is the last thing I expected ! A cryptocurrency exchange will pay for the hack themselves. Faith in Cryptocurrency exchanges restored. We should also consider that this is Japan and they highly value integrity and honour.
NEM Marks Stolen Coins
New Economy Movement (NEM) team declared that they will tag the stolen coins, so the exchanges can rocognize them and thus the thiefs won't be able to sell them ! This is pretty nice, it's like marked money that they use on the movies. Some next level thinking from NEM - NICE !
Please be careful out there! Crypto is a new field and scammers are everywhere. Keep your private keys and don't store your coins on one exchange only. Buy a hardware wallet, use paper wallets, 2FA and whatever else there is to secure your coins. Bookmark MEW and other frequently used websites.