33% of all bitcoin exchanges operational during 2009-2015 were hacked

New data disclosed to Reuters shows a third of bitcoin trading platforms have been hacked, and nearly half have closed in the half dozen years since they burst on the scene.

Tyler Moore, assistant professor of cyber security at the University of Tulsa's Tandy School of Computer Science will soon publish the new research on the vulnerability of bitcoin exchanges.



His study, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and shared with Reuters, shows that since Bitcoin's creation in 2009 to March 2015, 33 percent of all bitcoin exchanges operational during that period were hacked. The figure represents one of the first estimates of the extent of security breaches in the bitcoin world.



In contrast, data from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, showed that of the 6,000 operational U.S. banks, only 67 banks experienced a publicly-disclosed data breach between 2009 and 2015. That's roughly 1% of U.S. banks.



Among the world's stock exchanges, however, security breaches are much higher, with hackers attracted to the large pools of cash moving in and out of these trading venues. The latest survey of 46 securities exchanges released three years ago found that more than half had experienced a cyber attack.



In the most recent study, the rate of closure for bitcoin exchanges in Moore's research edged up to 48 percent among those operating from 2009 to March 2015. Hacking did not necessarily trigger the closure in each case. Profitability is a big problem for bitcoin exchanges, with many of them unable to generate enough volume to keep afloat.