Considering that major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are much harder to track than the common US dollar, hackers who take advantage of these characteristics often go unprosecuted. However, since it is always major exchanges that are hacked, the common “Joe” is affected a lot more by the hack than the exchange itself.
All around the world, countless civilians just barely make ends meet. Because of this they try to make the best out of their situation and invest the small amount of savings they have into crypto. With the hope of growing their small amount of savings into something sufficient to help their family, the worst possible outcome would be losing it all. Sadly, for 27 year old Dina, this was exactly the case. As a young housewife in the country of Indonesia who relied on her $30,000 crypto fortune to help her in her day to day life, without this fortune she is nothing. The stress of losing an amount like that, especially when it is needed by your family members to make ends meet is unimaginable for a teenager like myself.
Now moving onto the effects of hacking on crypto markets, the actions people take after certain incidents do not come as a surprise. Statistically after hacks that only targeted bitcoin, and affected those who held bitcoin, the price of other major cryptocurrencies like ethereum also took a dip. This data shows that even though bitcoin and ethereum are completely different crypto currencies, due to them both being relatively new ideas, investors tend to go in a panic mode and sell certain crypto currencies that have no correlation with the attack. While this move can be justified as “playing it safe” it comes across as confusing to me because in most instances when a major crypto hack occurs, the exchange is responsible for paying investors in cash for the losses that they took.
Lastly, it is important to not base your crypto investments off these occasional hacks that occur. I say this because even with the $610 million crypto hack that occurred this month, nearly all of it was returned. Now there are some that say it is just a hacker with a good heart who returned it, but there are also more realistic people who theorize that the hacker returned the hacked funds because he/she knew that it would be nearly impossible to withdraw such a large sum of crypto discreetly. If the hacker returned the sum of money because of the possibility of getting caught, it proves that security is only getting better for cryptocurrencies and with time the number of hacks will hopefully reduce.
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