Mercado, Brazil’s biggest Bitcoin exchange has been hacked, as they told their e-mail subscribers today. It seems that a DDoS attack on big exchanges like Mt. Gox or Bitstamp could cause a crash in the Bitcoin community. There have been several cases where the exchanges have caused a great withdrawal in Bitcoin trust, and thereby the price of Bitcoin. However, this should not be necessary.

Keep your Bitcoins safe

Of course, a lot of Bitcoin is exchanged at Mt. Gox, so there will always be a great loss when their security is compromised. The problem is, that too many people buy Bitcoin at one of the exchanges, and leave them there. Companies like Bitstamp, Mt. Gox and Mercado are exchanges, don’t trust them to be your bank, not to mention your wallet.

As soon as you buy Bitcoin and you are not a speculative Bitcoin user, send the Bitcoin to an encrypted Wallet on you pc. The whole point of Bitcoin’s up rise is the lack of collective trust in traditional banking institutes. We should not let laziness be the end of Bitcoin. If you buy Bitcoin and trust them with a two year old company in Japan that has proven to be comprisable security-wise, I think hackers can do more for the Bitcoin community than you can.