500 million USD Worth Of Digital Currency Lost Due To Bad Code
In various ways digital currency can be lost which include faulty flash drives, hacking and even forgotten passwords to name a few. However, bad coding could be one of the greatest sources of digital currency losses in dollar terms. In addition, coin developers are not normally responsible for these losses but in the previous seven months, third players such as shoddy smart contract and shady exchanges fault for losses amounting to half a billion dollars.
About 170 million dollar of nano digital currency was lost by Bitgrail last week as reported by news.Bitcoin.com. Although claims have been made that the cause of these losses is due to bad coding, the accurate series of actions that caused this disastrous outcome of trades with numerous client’s asset being held hostage is stilled being confirmed.
At that time, a narration was made which stated that “There are rumors that Bitgrail became insolvent following a withdrawal bug that was discovered by some users and then shared in Discord and other chat groups, causing the wallet balance to gradually diminish.” One user explained: “There was a bug on Bitgrail where if you placed two orders you got double balance added to your account. You could then withdraw while the orders were up and steal the coins. You had negative balance in the end but you could just make a new account.”
This notion has been strengthened by assertions that a bug was truly the cause, and in Bitgrail’s and not in nano’s code. According to clients experience, on the withdraw page, there was a bug. However on the java client-side this check was on it. Furthermore, the source elaborated that you review the element after finding the java-script which is sending the request, then the java-script is manually run and then withdrawal of a higher amount than in your account is sent through request. Finally, withdrawal is delivered by Bitgrail. His main concern was the number of people that did this and the number of people who are aware.
Etherum is the most apparent digital currency to be connected with disastrous bugs. This is due to smart contracts that can be created on top of the etherum framework but not due to its underlying code. Ethereum being forked right out the gate was due to the DAO, followed by 150,000 ETH stolen due to the Parity bug and then another 168 million Dollars of ETH was to be locked up due to another parity bug.
In recent weeks, there has been reemerges of ethereum bugs on a lower degree. About 900 ether worth of 1 million dollars was lost due to a scam by scamcoin also known as Proof of Weak Hands (PoWH) which truly turned into a scamcoin. The Scammers disappeared after he received dead threats from victims.
In conclusion, digital currency like ethereum and nano seem to have good prospects but they are prone to bugs prowling in smart contracts, exchanges and wallets. This proves that virtual currencies are as strong as their weakest link.
