Money is virtual, but thieves are real

Those who like to gain at the expense of others always keep up with the times, and no technology will stop them. Thieves of virtual money appeared shortly after the invention of cryptocurrencies. Since then, hackers have managed to carry out more than a dozen of large heists. One of the last was the embezzlement of cryptocurrency totalling 23.5 million dollars.


This time the victim of crackers turned out to be the Swiss Bancor platform. According to the official announcement of the blockchain startup management, the attackers stole about $12 million in Ethereum (24,984 coins), $1 million in Pundi X, and $10 million in BNT. In doing so, the company hastened to reassure users, stating that their funds are totally safe. In addition, all the stolen Bancor tokens were “frozen” with the help of a special system. As it is stated in the report, once the embezzlement was discovered, they were able to “freeze” the stolen BNT tokens, thus minimizing the damage to the Bancor ecosystem.


However, Bancor is unable to “freeze” the stolen tokens of Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. The only thing developers can do now is to monitor the movement of tokens together with a number of cryptocurrency exchanges. Against the background of the incident, according to CoinMarketCap, the Ethereum cost fell by almost 7% to $452 per one token, the BNT cost decreased immediately by 16% to $2.4.