Bitstamp loses 19000 bitcoins worth £3.3m after a vicious Cyberattack
“Avoid bitcoins for Now”- Gavin Anderson
On Monday, 5th January 2015, Security concerns were alarmingly raised at Bitstamp Europe’s leading bitcoin exchange, after an apparent hack that led to the company losing 19,000 bitcoins, worth £ 3.3m. This led to a sharp fall in the price of crypto currency. Bitcoin at its peak, traded for £820 on the Mt Gox, the crypto-currency’s biggest exchange, which collapsed and the Japanese group which filed to bankruptcy last year after losing £300m worth of Bitcoins in an apparent cyber attack and the bitcoin bubble burst. Critics make comparisons with 17th-century “tulip mania”, and predict that bit coin mania will fizzle out in similar fashion. Critics make comparisons with 17th-century “tulip mania”, and predict that bitcoin mania will fizzle out in similar fashion as DigiCash and e-gold, had failed.
The bitcoin price collapse and the exchanges’ woes do not tell the whole story. Increasing numbers of businesses are accepting payment in bitcoin, including Time Inc and Microsoft; and whatever the fate of bitcoin, the technology may spawn a range of alternative crypto-currencies and provide the basis for other businesses involving such things as the transfer of assets in collateral currency.
According to Bitcoin site the price now is about £187.
Bitcoins exist as entries in a giant electronic ledger called the “blockchain” which contains the detail history of every transaction in the coin, and copies of it are held on several computers around the world. Bitcoin does not need a “central bank” to issue it or to control flows of money. If a fraudster wanted to spend a bitcoin twice, he would need to disguise it by massaging the ledger and controlling more than half of the network’s computing capacity.
Gavin Anderson, Bitcoin’s chief scientist and code keeper, who created the closet thing to Central bank for Cyber currency said “ Don’t use Bitcoins unless you are technically competent enough to keep your computer secure from cyber-hackers”. Minting the digital currency has become a big, ruthlessly competitive business.
Since bitcoin’s invention in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, people have increasingly traded it for real money, albeit at a wildly varying price. Although there are only $3.8 billion-worth of them in circulation—bitcoins are hard to earn and in limited supply.
According to Newsweek Dorian S. Nakamoto, the Japanese-American Engineer is theBItcoin’s inventor and the man responsible for turning virtual currency into a commodity worth billons. Blockstream was given $21 million by leading Silicon Valley investors including Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman – who aims to extend Bitcoin’s functionality so it can power much more than just payments.
Bitcoin is wild and crazy and novice and ordinary people should steer away from using it.