Over $40 Million Stolen In Latest Binance Bitcoin Hack

Hackers stole over $40 million of Bitcoin from Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the company said on Tuesday.

According to the company, the hackers ran off with over 7,000 bitcoin and used a variety of attack methods to carry out the “large scale security breach”. The hackers also managed to take other user information including two-factor authentication codes, which are a pre-requisite to log into most Binance Accounts.

The cryptocurrency exchange, however, was able to trace the stolen bitcoin to a single wallet. “The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time,” Binance said in a statement.

“The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that.”

Binance said the theft occurred from the company’s “hot wallet,” which accounts for around 2% of its total bitcoin holdings. A wallet is a digital means of storing cryptocurrency. A “hot wallet” is one that is connected to the internet as opposed to a “cold” one which stores digital coins offline. Deposits and withdrawals on Binance’s platform will remain suspended but trading will be allowed.

Binance also warned that “hackers may still control certain user accounts and may use those to influence prices.” However, the company said that it will cover the incident “in full” and no users’ funds will be affected. The hack comes after a recent rally in bitcoin. The price of the digital coin is about 9% higher over the past week.

Monarch Blockchain Corporation’s Solution:

Hacks like these are one of the reasons to argue for users to maintain ownership of their cryptocurrency and not some centralized business or organization.  

You may have heard “Not Your Key’s, Not Your Crypto”, and it ever rings true here.  With most centralized exchanges, the exchange typically owns users keys and seed.  This means they own the users crypto while they use their services.

However, with the Monarch Wallet, users own their keys & seed.  While supporting over 1900+ cryptocurrencies and ensuring users own their cryptocurrency, the Monarch Wallet also features an ERC20 Token to ERC20 Token Decentralized exchange that allows most ERC20 Tokens to be swapped in a decentralized manner.  

What this means for users is by using the Decentralized exchange, their cryptocurrency isn’t put into a centralized exchange’s “hot wallet”, where it could be stolen.  Instead, the funds are traded through a smart contract exchange from person to person, or peer to peer, where the funds only leave each individual’s wallet when the contract is filled by another person.  The funds are then traded from one user’s wallet to another user’s wallet. This ensures the maximum amount of protection for both parties.

“It’s becoming more evident and important as the cryptocurrency market industry continues to grow, companies should be looking at solutions that give hackers the least amount of avenues to attack and steal from others.” – Robert Beadles, Founder of Crypto Beadles, President of Monarch, Creator Of  The Monarch Wallet.

Maintaining Decentralized services, where able, is one of the things Monarch Blockchain Corporation believes is extremely important and aids in limiting avenues for bad actors to utilize.

To learn more about Monarch, their Universal Crypto Wallet and connect with their growing cryptocurrency community, be sure to visit their website Here.