800,000 Bitcoins were stolen from MtGox, and $230 million was hacked from WazirX. How to use wallets to protect your assets?
Last week, the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX was hacked, with a total of about $230 million in assets stolen, involving assets such as SHIB, ETH, MATIC, PEPE and USDT.
According to the official Twitter notification, one of the multi-signature wallets was hacked, resulting in the theft.
The stolen assets are from one of the wallet addresses of the WazirX exchange. The loss should be within the platform’s tolerance and will not affect the account assets of the platform users, but it is basically difficult to recover the stolen assets.
The MtGox compensation incident, which has been hotly discussed recently, has also been discussed on major social media. For creditors, the 10-year BTC theft loss may be recovered.
In 2014, MtGox, the largest Bitcoin trading platform at the time, was hacked, and more than 800,000 BTC were stolen;
Subsequently, MtGox filed for bankruptcy protection, confirming that it was hacked and stolen, and lost more than 700,000 bitcoins, including users and 100,000 bitcoins owned by the platform, with a total of more than 800,000 BTC stolen.
According to today’s BTC price settlement, the market value exceeds $50 billion.
MtGox filed for bankruptcy, and users had to bear the losses. Many people’s crypto wealth was reduced to zero overnight, and the road to compensation was far away. Some creditors even went to Tokyo to hold placards, hoping to recover their losses.
The amount of money stolen from MtGox was huge, and its operating team was unable to pay compensation, and the platform’s stolen users suffered; if compensation can be achieved now, some users can also passively take the BTC increase and realize more than 70 times the profit.
The decentralized, tamper-proof and anonymous characteristics of blockchain guarantee the rights and interests of users on the one hand. There is no central agency to freeze the account, and it is impossible to query the owner behind the wallet, and it is impossible to cancel the transaction that has been operated.
These technical advantages are also a double-edged sword. Hackers steal assets on the chain and cannot recover them. They can only silently bear all losses.
Although it is a good choice for ordinary players to choose trading platforms to store and trade digital assets, there are certain risks. The wallets of all exchanges are the focus of hackers. Once the secret key/mnemonic is leaked, the wallet is stolen and the assets are lost.
All web3 users should also consider how to use digital wallets to store assets on the chain and manage their own wallets.
For example, metamask, imtoken, bitpie, Trust Wallet and OKX Wallet are all commonly used crypto wallets. Keep the mnemonics offline. The wallet does not link to additional dapps and does not interact. It is also a more reliable storage method.
There is a certain threshold for using wallets, but as long as you get started, your crypto assets can be better protected. You don’t need real-name authentication or platform supervision, and you can protect your crypto assets more privately.
Blockchain has opened up new ways of playing and experiencing for ordinary users, but there are also many risks and pitfalls. Spend some time learning to get started, and it may open up new ways of acquiring wealth.
Risks and opportunities coexist in the crypto market. Explore within the range you can afford, or join the Chuxiao web3 community of Chuxiao Chain to explore blockchain gameplay and go together.
The above is just my personal opinion, no investment advice. I am CryptoLola, and I am paying attention to the crypto market and web3.
