Stands to reason. With more money in crypto, the hacks are getting bigger.
Brings to my mind, the quote attributed to famed bank robber Willie Sutton. Sutton is supposed to have said, when asked why he robbed banks: “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” (The quote was probably made up by a magazine writer, but don’’t let that take the joy out of the remark.)
In an illustration of Sutton’s logic, crypto exchange Bybit has said it lost almost $1.5 billion worth of tokens. A hacker took control of one of Bybit’s offline Ethereum wallets, Chief Executive Officer Ben Zhou announced in a social media post Friday, and an estimated $1.46 billion in assets flowed out to, well, somewhere else. Bybit, headquartered in Dubai, is one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, processing more than $36 billion in daily average trading volume. The platform had roughly $16.2 billion in assets on its exchange prior to being hacked, according to reserves data from CoinMarketCap, Bloomberg reported. The hack surpassed the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021. (Who is responsible? Researchers are pointing the finger at North Korea.)
I’d note that the Trump administration has fired the Biden regulations looking to institute more controls and oversight over crypto currencies. And that proposals for a crypto currency reserve at the Federal Reserve continue to circulate in Congress.
Bybit says it has sufficient assets to cover losses even without recovering stolen funds.
