Article is by Molly White, who you might recognize from Mastodon and web3isgoinggreat.com:
https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/117526961419935070
I wrote up what we know about the Binance hack so far. By my best estimate, Binance is out around $3 billion after stablecoin issuers froze what they could. Changpeng Zhao is promising Binance will cover it, but he’s legally barred from running the company.
now updated to $6.8B.
So much for blockchain security and free money.
Did they break the security of the blockchain or just hacked an application that stored it in a database?
$6.8B is the figure they stole, but since some of the assets got frozen they are only left with $3B they can use
only
They were able to recover a lot, so 3B is what they cannot recover.
Isn’t blockchain just a way to control the transactions? Why can’t they just reverse the transactions and essentially deny the theft?
A blockchain doesn’t actually provide control over a transaction, it just verifies that it happened. It’s supposed to be a long, immutable record of every transaction that has ever ocurred, which is precisely why transactions can’t be reversed. The work of verifying those transactions is performing by miners, or some other “proof of” design where you have an authority in the chain that confirms it.
Basically, it’s nothing more than a fancy receipt.
Well if you did that, then crypto would cease to be useful as a criminal currency, wouldn’t it?
They had access to 6.8, Binance froze over 3 billion, and off chain partners froze other coins. They said 3 billion or less.
So much for blockchain security and free money. You missed the point, this wasn’t supposed to be possible, bro.