All the Ways You Can Lose Your Bitcoin

Story by: Lily Katz and Andre Tartar

There are lots of opportunities for cryptocurrency to go missing—some inherent to buying internet money, some involving crime. Below, a few common ways of going virtually broke.

Not Really Your Fault

Phone Porting

Pretty basic: Scammers hijack people’s mobile accounts by calling their carriers and impersonating them. The thieves get their victims’ numbers transferred to new devices and ultimately gain access to crypto accounts.

51 Percent Attack

This hasn’t happened yet, but it’s every crypto enthusiast’s greatest fear. If a nefarious syndicate were to gain control of more than half of the Bitcoin network’s computing power, it could tamper with the process of verifying transactions and potentially spend the same Bitcoins twice.

Ransom Demands

Everyone from local officials to large corporations has fallen victim to ransomware attacks, which often involve hackers holding computer files hostage until the victim pays a fee in crypto. In June 2017 a South Korean web provider paid hackers $1 million in Bitcoin. Although many payments aren’t publicized, it’s the largest ransomware demand known to have been paid.

Original story: https://tinyurl.com/y8dples6

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