In the wake of the recent hack of the Bitfinex bitcoin exchange in Hong Kong, the Ethereum hack earlier this year and the Mt. Gox hack in 2014, the stability and security of cryptocurrency is being questioned. Cryptocurrency expert Robert Schwentker says these attacks could raise questions about whether regulatory oversight of bitcoin exchanges is needed.
“The hack of the Bitfinex exchange in Hong Kong, which resulted in approximately 120,000 bitcoins being stolen … was not, again, a hack of bitcoin protocol itself,” Schwentker says in this video interview with Information Security Media Group. “It’s similar to the Mt. Gox hack, where an exchange got hacked. Certain security protocols apparently might not have been followed, and the practices that they set up were not followed. Therefore, there’s been this loss of people’s funds. Whether the exchange will make those people who had put their bitcoins on their exchange whole again or not, we’ll have to see.”
