In 2019, the cryptocurrency market fell victim to many hacks, thefts, and breaches. The thefts, hacks, and breaches put together have cost the cryptocurrency market a cumulative amount of $882 million USD. All these malicious activities of the cryptocurrency market are concentrated on two major parts of it. And they are the exchanges and ICO spaces.
The exchanges and the ICO space of the cryptocurrency market are the most vulnerable. This is because they do not have proper security systems and verification processes in place and even the ones that do are not safe from the temptation to hack.
But that is not all. The Moscow-based cyber security firm and a large sect of the global cryptocurrency community are convinced that this is only the beginning and that 2019 will only see that number rise drastically. This is also a sentiment that has been resonating through the community over the past couple of weeks. Here is why the community believes that the hacks and thefts are just on the verge of peaking next year.
Seasoned Hacking Groups
The cryptocurrency market and the community, though it pimps out transparency as one of its most important features, has quite a large amount of privacy. Which means, while the actual identity of the person is hidden, it is very possible to track them down using their IP addresses.
Utilizing the shield that the market provides, a lot of hackers have come together to form groups whose main aim is to hack exchanges and split the reward. The number of these groups is on the rise as of now and it is believed that most of them work out of Eurasian countries.
Similar: How Safe is Binance Exchange
Lucrative Honeypots
Most exchanges in the market at this point provide wallet services to its users. And their users’ assets are stored online on the exchange platforms itself. Which leads to the accumulation of a large number of assets in one place, forming what is called a honeypot.
Because of the honeypots that are formed on exchange platforms, they make themselves liable to hacks. The index of liability is directly proportional to the number of users on the platform and further the number of users that use wallet services on the platform.
Formations of honeypots are inevitable in online storage wallets, the only thing that these exchanges can do is step up security for them. But irrespective of that, exchanges and their wallet services become the most lucrative hacking options in the market as of now.
Good Read: “KuCoin vs Binance – Which is the best crypto exchange”
Low-grade Security
The thing with exchanges and Bitcoin platforms is that no matter how much they spend on reliability and performance, there will be many corners cut in terms of security. This is because the security of the exchanges will never match up to the high-grade security systems that big firms have in place.
The combination of high values of money that flow through the platform and the relatively low-grade security standards make these exchanges and platforms irresistible to pass up on.
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Value Remains Same
One of the most interesting characteristics of the cryptocurrency market is that irrespective of how susceptible the cryptocurrency market is to attacks and hacks, the value of the currencies and the respective importance that the community gives to them remain the same.
Even though during the immediate aftermath of a hack the market slumps a little, it picks right back up. This is because Bitcoin is one of the most liquid digital assets in the market right now. And the community behind it believes in the technology and its future.
The Moscow-based cyber security firm has announced and discussed it’s technical analytics to support the fact that the height of hacking risk is on the high. Exchanges and ICOs are the most susceptible parts of the market and that is going to be the continuing trend of the next year as well.
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