Did cryptocurrency acolytes ever promise their messiah was "unhackable?" I don't recall such a promise. The premise was about changing the locus of control, away from banks and governments and toward the general public. Obviously it can still be stolen, like anything that can be owned, but "hacking" implies exploiting the system itself rather than stealing via social engineering.
As other commenters have said though, this is just reporting on the 51% attack again, in what reads like a lazy hitpiece. And this from a crypto critic: I think distributed currencies and public ledgers are a great idea that may evolve into something workable eventually, but they're clearly not there yet, and Bitcoin especially has no future beyond speculation. Even so, let's stick to real criticisms rather than this lazy nonsense.
Even reputable cryptocurrency exchanges are being targeted by the hackers. We should really take note on how we can safely hide our private keys in order for our crypto assets to be safe. We should be vigilant against viruses and phishing websites.
This is not a "new security hole" that has been discovered. This is just the execution of the known 51% attack on a dead coin with 0.00002% of Bitcoin's hashrate...
As other commenters have said though, this is just reporting on the 51% attack again, in what reads like a lazy hitpiece. And this from a crypto critic: I think distributed currencies and public ledgers are a great idea that may evolve into something workable eventually, but they're clearly not there yet, and Bitcoin especially has no future beyond speculation. Even so, let's stick to real criticisms rather than this lazy nonsense.