http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-28/coincheck-worlds-biggest-cryptocurrency-hack/9368056 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-28/coincheck-cryptocurrency-exchange-loses-half-a-billion/9368100 It seems that security is a problem and hackers clearly can hack crypto's. Thanks to the famous anonimity the hackers cannot be exposed. Real money appears to be safer and more stable then crypto's. Over half a billion got lost.
It all depends on Trump and rich friends whether the IRS taxes crypto or not, If they are hugely in they won't.
For the owners of the crypto's it doesn't matter. Their crypto's are GONE. The whole crypto organisation is not safe, that should be clear by now. Which part in the chain is not safe doesn't matter; the result is a loss of huge amounts of "money". Replacing money with crypto's appears not to be so cheap.And not safe at all. Athough I must admit that transfers can go fast and are anonymous. $660 million disappeared quickly and without a trace to physical persons. It is also crazy that you sometimes have to buy first a crypto you don't want to buy from there on the crypto you want. So double transactions, double costs and double price risk as markets go up and down all the time. The $660 millions that were stolen and for 80% will be paid back have to come from somewhere. The exchange will charge the market for recovering the loss. So the crypto holders themselves will pay for the loss thru expenses or other charges.
If you don't own the private key(s) to the coins, you do not own the coins. It's simply the way bitcoin (cryptos) are designed. If the exchange owns the private keys to the coins, they own them and they "owe" you the coins on paper, but if they shut down or exit scam, you got nothing.
Neither have the original owners of the crypto's. But the crypto's are LOST. If not the exchange could give them back to the original owners. Which they cannot, so... in best case everybody lost. The stolen crypto's are gone forever. I don't like to put my money in this kind of constructions, there are better and safer ways. I noticed in past already that if transferring get easier it attracts criminals. The easier transferring makes it more rewarding for the hackers as they can steal very easy lots of money from lots of accounts. That's also why I never use these easy payment facilities (pc or mobile phone). I work the old way, which means that each payment requires a lot of checks and manual handling to execute a payment. Hackers don't like that as they need to much time and need to hack each account one by one. They are only interested in "automated" and anonymous hacking. And crypto's are the best fitted market for this. I never hear about all these problems in the banking world. And the problems are just starting and will grow fast. Crypto's should improve things, but things get clearly worse.
Are you referring to the estimated 1 Million + bitcoins that Satoshi Nakamoto mined and have not moved since the time of their creation? How do you know that the private keys are "lost"? And if they are lost, how do you know they were not destroyed on purpose by Satoshi Nakamoto (himself/herself/themselves)? It is true, if you lose the private keys to your coins, they are gone forever. If you don't know the rule of 3-2-1 when it comes to backups, you shouldn't own any coins.
I refer to my posting 1372. By original owners I mean the people who bought/mined coins and then got hacked or simply lost them. More and more people get in trouble with their crypto's (lost, hacked, stolen, bought at insane prices...) I never had this problem with my bank accounts in my entire life. Crypto's have for the average joes more disavantages then advantages. I am sure that 90% of these average joes have no clue what they are doing and are just greedy. They want to make fast money in something that can only go up... they think. If you ignore the speculation "profits" (or losses) they can make, what is the use for the average joe who never transfers millions, never makes transfers abroad, never pays with crypto's... they don't need crypto's.