Topic: Crypto whales hacked, lost $15M BTC and $30M BCH (Read 603 times)

You keep two wallets, one of long term big sums, this is an offline (cold) wallet; essentially a piece of paper with some words written in it by hand (yes really). This is a wallet you can only deposit funds to, not withdraw unless you move it "online" (hot), something which should only be done rarely and with the appropriate security precautions (ie. linux live image booting in a secured pc).

The other wallet, for small day to day sums. Prepare to lose it at any time (ie. stolen phone, forgotten password, etc). You should decide up to what amount you are willing to lose "suddenly", the excess send it to the cold wallet where is safe from "hackers". This wallet can be a hardware wallet for added security, rather than a smartphone or regular pc.

Unlike what some people think, hardware wallets should not be used for long term cold storage. Electronic things can fail, but of course the hardware wallet also gives you seed words for you to write in a piece of paper...

Newcomers need to adapt. Bitcoin is not identical to fiat, it cannot be handled the same way. It is not THAT hard, but its different, and you have to get used to it. This is the responsibility of being your own bank. Sure, you can STILL pay others to handle your money, if you trust in them (as you trust in banks). That's what those online wallets, exchanges, (and surely banks in the future) are for. Think Binance can protect your money better than you? Give it to them. I don't think that is wise tho, but traders get greedy and cannot stand having a large sum safely stored in a cold wallet, which is why so many people lose so much money when an exchange fails. The smart trader would only trade with a part, and keep the other part safe.

But this might be a generational divide, same way smartphones disrupted people's lives, while millennials take them for granted. Fiat money is, after all, a pre-internet era thing, just like old fashioned land line phones, film photography, vinyl record players etc. Give it a couple more decades and you might see fiat money becoming the way of the horse carriage.

You have misinterpreted my opinions, whales are expert but yet was using the same device which he or she use to surf through the internet to store his or.portfolios. known fully well that; any device use to surf the internet is not safe but prone to hacks. Believed me, that victim have no interest on knowing the technology but derived pleasure in what he or she can gain through the technology. Its a lesson for others who thought the technology is just about earnings. In yge first place, why not such huge amount of funds store in a ledger which cost $75 instead of storing them on the  same device used to surf the internet. Believed me, he's learning the lesson against the future.

Totally agree. As well, you should not use the same device for cryptocurrency transactions as for private and personal use (even if we are speaking about thousands, not millions of USD). Especially if on that device you are browsing for potentially unsafe content eg. porn, downloading files while having saved passwords stored in your browser. 

It was horrible, I couldn't imagine if I were him who lose a lot money. Against, hacking is someting bad that always (often) happening on bitcoin user and I guess we can't avoid it. I just thinking, what is the safest way to store bitcoin? And what is the right way to exchange them to money fiat.

And also this thing will be made by other people there especially newcomers as a fear. Let say, they have known bitcoin and its promising place for investing because they could get a huge profit from it, but in another side they will be pay attention for security thing which I mean that is the first factor that should be watch out for.

the title says crypto whale . whale means expert on this field so i dont believe that he arent aware of the risk plus not only him but many pro and big hodlers do also got hacked no matter how they secure thier accounts . thats only an evidence that hackers are smarter  than the users of the wallet and exchanges because they know how to bypass any security without us knowing it and they mainly target big people because me i havent been hacked yet luckily as im also a small time cryptoer

You have a point though, but, nobody can tell what exactly happened to him as such amount shouldn't have be kept into online wallet. The victim might be those who haven't interested in the knowing of this technology but rather love to associate with the investment involved. We still have many of them till  date and when this happened they tend to blame the community. We must learn many things about security in thus regards, the amount of funds are too much to keep online. As you're investing in your portfolios ensure to invest in your knowledge too.

That's kinda scary. Good thing that I don't hold that much of funds in an online wallet, except for cases that I need to cash it out or buy something for the provided services like buying credits from certain platforms or even buying mobile phone credits. This is why I don't really feel safe in online wallets, even if 2fa is enabled. Hackers don't sit all day waiting for prey. They're just always there behind the monitors planning something anyday.
Consider investing to hardware wallets, it isn't that 100% security but it lessens the possibility of having these losses.

Someone with that amount of Bitcoin? There is no way they would store on their mobile phone in an exchange or on a samsung phone. This has to be fake. How on earth could a whale let this happen in such a hacker driven environment around the space? I don't believe this.

Damn man, what are these sim hacks that I have been hearing of lately. I have been seeing news on how people got their wallets hacked through SIM, and I don’t even know how them hackers managed to do this, seems like people are no longer safe here.

Read news on a boy that hacked several of his victims cryptocurrency wallets through this same SIM thing. And the way I see it, I think this only happens with online wallets I guess, since those are the kind of wallets you will have to verify sometimes using your phone number. Offline wallets doesn’t require anything that has to do with any of your details. This is very bad, and I wonder how this victim will be feeling right now losing such an amount of money, $45 million worth of cryptocurrency is too much meehn.  

What an unfortunate news. We all know that it will affect the market greatly considering the fact that whales holds large amount of bitcoins. That would be a lesson for a lifetime for that certain whale cause that is a huge amount of money, who knows how long it was held just to reach up to that point. Even the richest investors are not exempted from hackers, the higher the money you are currently holding, the higher the risk from scammers and hackers so if you are one of them, be extra careful with your holdings and investments.

Lots or almost majority do really hope for that global adoption thing on where crypto would completely replace fiats? Even in our dreams these things wont really happen due to lots of factors
that would block out such possibility and also it isnt really capable on every aspect.People would still prefer fiat in any case in the end of the day.

On topic about a crypto whale got victimized by sim hack then its just pretty dumb for someone on using up his own phone or some web wallet platforms on storing
up those millions.Even storing it on an offline wallet does still have the risk on losing those coins, how much more to those storage which are actively being used online?

I think that cryptocurrency should be never adopted as the main currency of a country over paper notes. Though that sounds a bit outdated, but think about a whole country getting robbed by only a single exploit and by a single person- that won't be an ideal situation to fall in. So, my personal opinion is, use cryptocurrency as an alternative to paper notes, not as a replacement.

How so? It's wrong to assume that stolen coins are sold immediately. In fact, when it comes to such large amounts, it could take months, perhaps years before chunks make it to the spot market. I would say it's quite bullish for the market short term speaking because supply has been taken out of the market.

Obviously, thefts are not a good thing because criminals shouldn't be rewarded for their actions, but price wise it's more bullish than bearish.

The whale have enough money to buy a hardware wallet but still decides to keep it all in his phone,
It was stollen because of his own foolishness why would you even keep that huge amount on something risky?
It is not like you would spend it daily so you wouldn't need to keep it on a hardware wallet.

No. They are the reason PHONES are scary, this was a SIM attack, if you did your banking, stocks, or whatever from it, they could have been stolen as well.

There is no problem with Bitcoin. There is a problem with PEOPLE using PHONES insecurely to handle LARGE amounts from it.

A (smart)phone is insecure, you should never handle anything but small amounts from ir, and expect to lose them at any time (stole phone, etc).

Computers can be insecure, but they are easier to secure than most phones. Installing Linux in a PC is trivial next to a smartphone, where only a few models here and there can get rid of android for something decent. But of course that doesn't include the SIM, ie the line. Perhaps without line, a tablet running Linux can be good enough (it would use wifi, but you at least could torify that).

Splitting is ok, but more importantly is splitting into cold (ie: secured paper with hand written seed words nobody can see) and hot wallets for small "everyday" amounts. Yes, there is no reason to keep large amounts into a hot wallet, Exchanges learned that the hard way.

To keep 45M like that is beyond careless, its irresponsible. I have no sympathy for people like that. Do you, perchance, keep a mountain of banknotes on the back of your car when you drive around and leave it parked in public places for everyone to see? Because this is about the same thing. And no, leaving your car "locked" isn't going to count, you WILL get your money stolen.

This is scary, although this can't affect the bitcoin market as the market is more than enough to consume the money involved. Wait how can a cybersecurity expert be hacked of such huge fund. why didn't he use a cold storage for such huge amount? I can't leave huge fund in a hot wallet.

I've also been on the same situation where my funds are wasted for nothing because of my own stupidity. I admit my mistakes and accepted the consequences of my actions. It makes me realized that I end up on that situation because of not having enough knowledge on how I can secure my funds from hackers. My experience helped me understand how one mistake can make an impact on your whole funds, it is the reason why I keep myself open for new learning when it comes to protecting our funds from scammers and hackers.

When I first read the news I felt that this was another fud attempt, but after seeing this story pop up every where I realised that he had indeed lost his millions to a stupid hack.

While many of us are busy in condemning him I hope others are taking valuable lessons from this hack, and if anyone has got some good suggestions to stay safe from this kind of hack then do post it here so all can read and implement those suggestions to be safe.

Reading such news,immediately recall the years 2015-2016, when hackers were quite active, the most striking example is the case when a hacker hacked the DAO, and this was one of the main reasons for creating Ethereum Classic. Then it hit ethereum pretty hard.

Thanks. But this is the nth time that someone's fund was hacked due to this method and also a big negligence from the owner himself of keeping it there. They never learn from the mistakes of others that if they don't hold the keys, they don't hold the funds. There's someone that commented on the tweet how much the ledger is and that's truly a shame to the owner. Now that I've left the discussion for a day and there's a new story that's circulating which making it more interesting again.