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Chaos and hackers stalk investors on cryptocurrency exchanges
By Steve Stecklow, Alexandra Harney, Anna Irrera, and Jemima Kelly
Reuters
Friday, September 29, 2017
Dan Wasyluk discovered the hard way that trading cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin happens in an online Wild West where sheriffs are largely absent.
Wasyluk and his colleagues raised bitcoins for a new tech venture and lodged them in escrow at a company running a cryptocurrency exchange called Moolah. Just months later the exchange collapsed. The man behind it is awaiting trial in Britain on fraud and money-laundering charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Wasyluk’s project lost 750 bitcoins, currently worth about $3 million, and he believes he stands little chance of recovering any money.
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"It really was kind of a kneecapping of the project," Wasyluk said of the collapse, which happened three years ago. "If you are starting an exchange and you lose clients' money, you or your company should be 100 percent accountable for that loss. And right now there is nothing like that in place."
Cryptocurrencies were supposed to offer a secure, digital way to conduct financial transactions, but they have been dogged by doubts. Concerns have largely focused on their astronomical gains in value and the likelihood of painful price crashes. Equally perilous, though, are the exchanges where virtual currencies are bought, sold, and stored. These exchanges, which match buyers and sellers and sometimes hold traders’ funds, have become magnets for fraud and mires of technological dysfunction, a Reuters examination shows, posing an underappreciated risk to anyone who trades digital coins. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/bitcoin-exchanges-risks/
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