I read a fantastic story about a guy who claims his computer got hacked. No big deal, right? Well he claims that the hacking resulted in somebody stealing his bitcoins. There were a lot of them. The total value amounted to $500,000. The owner blames Microsoft Windows for the theft.There was a lot of discussion in the Bitcoin community about this claim. How could they stop the selling of so much Bitcoin? What would be the effect on the Bitcoin market? Is this story for real? Some people doubted the facts. Things sounded a bit fishy. I myself thought that it could be true. I never did find out any proof about the alleged theft. Other commenters wanted some proof.
Move forward and we find that there was a run on the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It caused a crash. Tons of bitcoins were put on the market for sale. This drove the value of a bitcoin from $17 to a penny. The exchange declared that it was going to roll back the transactions. Some who profited from the drop publicly groaned. The exchange justified this by stating that the crash came as a result of a theft. Once again the call was made for details and proof of the theft.
Finally I see a public announcement from the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It appears an admin account was compromised. The person assigned themselves a large amount of bitoins. Then they went to town trying to sell them all. They got away with 2000 bitcoins. The exchange said they would eat this loss and that security has been improved. However the exchange seems to have backed away from the story about somebody's personal bitcoin wallet with tons of bitcoins being stolen.
I recall one guy who heard the initial story about a computer being hacked and tons of bitcoins being stolen. He postulated that maybe nobody's wallet was stolen, and that the exchange had an account that was hacked. Bamm. Right on target. Perhaps this person had insider info. Whatever the case, I find it odd how the story has changed from the exchange. I am glad I don't have any money in Bitcoins.
