After the information about Binance hacking at 7K BTC (about $ 40 M), the Binance Coin (BNB) rates went down as expected. The Corn, however, did not collapse. Perhaps due to competent anti-crisis PR by Changpeng Zhao (CZ).
You have to be a bit modest, comrade!
If this hack had not happened, something else had to happen. Because market players are already unbearable to observe the continuous rapid growth of BNB. Since December 2018, the coin has grown more than 5 times, from $ 4.5 to $ 25. The capitalization of BNB increased accordingly from $ 600 M to $ 3.5 B.
If BNB token keep dynamics, plans to become market leaders could be implemented. By the autumn of 2019, the coin could get the third place in terms of capitalization. Obviously, not all players were happy about this success. In its half-hour AMA with 2000 users CZ bitterly complained that he had not slept much lately, so he looks bad. Still would. His exchange violated all security conditions at once. You must not worry about your appearance in that conditions.
7000 BTC in one transaction from hot wallet
Most carelessness than admitted CZ, it is difficult to imagine at present time. Inspired by his success, CZ seems not to accept the lessons that cryptoindustry gave us. By his own admission, hackers attacked the exchange using phishing, viruses, and a set of other techniques that, they say, were not disclosed for security purposes. And took 7000 BTC in one transaction!
– It impacted our BTC hot wallet only (which contained about 2% of our total BTC holdings). All of our other wallets are secure and unharmed.
Well, what can I say, if a single transaction of $ 40 M has not attracted attention of the exchange. Happy for you! In his defense CZ declares:
– The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed.
Yeah. Just no luck! Are you serious?
Are you crazy, guys?
However, we must pay tribute to him – CZ gathered his strength and quickly extinguish the panic. First of all, he promised to cover the loss:
– So we are completely ok on the funding side, it does hurt very much, but we are able to cover it, so we do not need a funding help.
CZ also honestly admitted that at the time of recovery of the system and data, the withdrawal of funds and the acceptance of deposits are suspended for about a week. As for users, the team will be forced to change the API keys. This will affect the users who trade through the API:
– I do want to beg people to forgive us in terms of not being able to withdraw for the next week or so. We do want to make sure that we are completely secure and we solve everything before we actually turn things back on. Security is our main concern!
If you do not consider the final phrase, which looks mocking – then this is correct, anti-crisis PR as in textbook. And it always works.
Summarizing
Obviously, the reputation of the Binance exchange suffered greatly. It is possible that the hack was prepared by competitors. How soon will this incident be forgotten? Maybe soon. Moreover, the growth of the BNB coin is not at all due to the popularity of the exchange, but to the successful IEO on its platform. But hackers cannot prevent this.
Binance is still in TOP-10 exchanges, in 9th place, with a volume of almost $ 1 B per day, with 470 markets.
