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If there is a way to steal crypto someone is always going to find it

Glad I didn't Buy any Bitcoin Gold. So someone was able to gain control of 51 percent of bitcoin Gold network and initiated a double spend attack

After gaining control of the network, the attacker began depositing BTG at cryptocurrency exchanges while also attempting to send those same coins to a wallet under their control. Ordinarily, the blockchain would resolve this by including only the first transaction in the block, but the attacker was able to reverse transactions since they had majority control of the network.

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So after he had sent funds from the exchange to a private wallet he was able to reverse the transaction to the exchange and send those coins to himself. Leaving exchanges on the hook.

Third Coin To Get Hit

This follows a similar attacks on Verge and monacoin. And Verge just got attacked AGAIN. I guess Verge did a shit job advising people too and the holders of that coin were wondering why the price was tanking. They just released a statement they were under DOS attack, but haven't fixed it yet. They had a month and the the same type of attack was used again.

https://news.bitcoin.com/verge-struck-by-second-pow-attack-in-as-many-months/

That's all I needed to see to stay the fuck away from Verge. They lost 35 million coins. The 2nd hack

The 51 percent attack happened for the second time yesterday where the attacker was able to allocate false timestamps on Verge blocks. This resulted in the minting of 35 million XVG coins ahead of schedule on an extremely low difficulty.

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For me this is the worst fear about getting into crypto. The theft and hacks. These operations probably have had some money to take over networks like that, I was afraid of a teenage hacker in his parents basement stealing my money, but this could have been done by anyone from organized crime to a rogue state.

Edit while reading more about it I see the Verge hack could have been done by taking over only one of five different algorithms. He lowers the difficulty for just miners of using the algorithm he is using (called Scrypt) and only needs to take over 10 percent of the network, just dominate 51 percent of the the miners also using scrypt.

This blog explains what is happening quite well thanks to Charlie Lee (Litecoin) for tweeting about it
https://blog.theabacus.io/the-verge-hack-explained-7942f63a3017

Be wary of small alt coins

Incidents such as these illustrate the difficulty of securing smaller PoW chains. It is not inconceivable that a time might arrive when only BTC, BCH, and a handful of other chains of note are secured by PoW, with lesser altcoins forced to migrate to Proof of Stake to mitigate 51% attacks.

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One reason to stick with coins like real Bitcoin or Ethereum because no one actor could control the network like that. It would cost Billions to take over the Bitcoin network and you would only get one transaction in before getting booted. I'm glad I held off buying Verge and Bitcoin Cash. I see some users in both communities blaming their coin's haters for the hack, LOL. This was done to make money, not by people who want to see your coin fail. This was a lesson for me to really do research on what I invest in. Coins may have all sorts of potential but if they can get easily hacked there is no way I want to own them.

See also:

https://twitter.com/bitcoingold/status/997466283653455872

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-gold-hit-by-double-spend-attack-exchanges-lose-millions/

https://cryptolive.club/bitcoin-gold-hit-by-double-spend-attack-exchanges-lose-millions/

https://coingape.com/verge-collapse-after-51-attack/

https://www.ccn.com/op-ed-china-ranked-51-attack-verge-and-bitcoin-at-13-in-blockchain-list/

https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/999027979891044352