Israeli Trading Exchange Bancor, Hacked

BTC Wires: In exciting new news from Israel, the most popular Israeli cryptocurrency platform, Bancor recently lost Ethereum worth $12.5 million. This happened as a result of hackers and cyber baddies in an overnight raid. Bancor is a well-known decentralized exchange service that is currently facing the consequences of getting ripped off millions of cryptocurrency tokens that belonged to its users. A hack of this size in Israel, or anywhere in the world for that matter, leads us to think that these blockchain giants are simply not giving enough consideration to their security.

This major hack was initially described as a “security breach.” However, recently, Bancor revealed in a statement that this cybercrime happened as a result of exploiting an already compromised wallet and then inserting malicious code in specific smart contracts. This invasion enabled the hackers to withdraw a whopping 25,000 Ethereum tokens that amount to $12.5 million. The funny thing is that Bancor could immediately recover the $10 million worth of native BNT coins because they were frozen. Bancor was quick to appreciate the irony, crediting their ability to be able to freeze tokens in case of such events. This happened on the heels of several such instances where these moves were mercilessly criticized .

The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin spoke last week at a TechCrunch’s blockchain event and commented that all the centralized exchanges in the world should “Go burn in hell.” His disdain for centralized exchanges was primarily because of the greed since they demand a huge amount of fees in advance in order to list tokens. But the irony doesn’t end there. Bancor supported Buterin’s comments saying that although it is a bit extreme to wish for these exchanges to “burn in hell,” “we do agree with @VitalikButerin that #decentralized solutions— such as Bancor— are the future of #blockchain and value exchange.