Letter: Hacks fuel mistrust and slow crypto adoption

You report that Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has recently confirmed that it was the victim of a cross-chain bridge hack (Report, October 8).

The attackers initially made off with $570mn worth of BNB tokens. However, Binance and its validators took containment actions to limit the actual damage to closer to $100mn.

Blockchain bridges, which allow digital asset movement from one blockchain to another, have been the target of several hacks during the past 15 months.

Since the third quarter of 2021, $2bn of cryptocurrency has been stolen in 13 separate bridge hacks.

Interest in the hack initially was red-hot. Once contained, the crypto community quickly moved on — treating the attack as “business as usual”.

But each hack delegitimises our industry, fuels public mistrust of our space and pushes back crypto adoption.

Tom Tirman
Chief Executive and Co-founder, PARSIQ
Tallinn, Estonia