After hack: Japanese Bitcoin exchanges want new rules

Japanese Bitcoin exchanges have joined forces to take precautions against future attacks. However, the new rules will have little impact on the security of the stock markets. A fight against windmills?

It was probably that famous drop that made the barrel overflow. On September 17, strangers stole $ 59 million worth of crypto currency from the Zaif crypto exchange. Including the impressive sum of 5,966 Bitcoin as well as some reserves of Bitcoin Cash and MonaCoin. Initially, the operators of the exchange thought only that it was a server error. The next day, however, they disillusioned that it was a hack. Finally, the operators alerted the authorities - so far from the lost Bitcoin but missing any trace.

New regulations are intended to curb Bitcoin theft
To better counter such incidents in the future, a group of Bitcoin exchange operators has now joined forces. They want to create new rules. As the Japan Times reports, the "Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association" wants to introduce a restriction for online stored cryptocurrencies in the future. The exact restrictions are apparently not yet agreed. However, members of the exclusion are currently considering putting in place an upper limit of 10-20 percent of user deposits. This means that Bitcoin exchanges will in the future undertake to otherwise store the rest of the crypto currencies. At the moment they are still working out the rules and then submit them to the Japanese Financial Services Authority for revision.

Symptom control without problem solving
Thus, the merger of operators reacts to a series of attacks on crypto exchanges. Coincheck was attacked in January this year. According to estimates, a total of 523 million NEMs were lost. A limitation of cryptocurrencies stored online would only limit such incidents in the future, but not prevent them. Ultimately, it does not increase the security of the stock exchanges; the old problem remains: cryptocurrencies can still be so secure that if they are traded on uncertain centralized stock exchanges, they can steal attackers from there at any time.