The cryptocurrency industry is circling the wagons in defense as hackers siphon more money from the sector each year. Hackers made off with more than $3 billion in digital assets so far this year, according to research firm Chainalysis. In October alone, $718 million was taken in 11 different hacks, making it the worst month in the worst year for crypto hacking, the firm said. That included $100 million from the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, when its blockchain network, Binance Smart Chain, was exploited. Experts in academia, crypto exchanges, the research community and the legal industry are speaking out, in the face of increasingly massive losses, to say that hacking does not present an existential risk to crypto as a concept. Their efforts come as the industry faces more prominent blows — including the bankruptcy filing last month of the FTX exchange and the resignation of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, a figure who had become a spokesman for cryptocurrency and an influential voice in Washington — and as legislators and regulators struggle to come up with rules. FTX reportedly lent billions of dollars to an affiliated trading business, and now faces several investigations.
Full opinion : Overshadowed by failures, crypto hacking exacts higher price.
