The hits continue for bitcoin owners. After Bitfinex revealed this week that a hacker made off with 119,756 bitcoins (about $72 million), the digital-currency exchange said Friday it is interested in a "socialized loss.""We are leaning towards a socialized loss scenario among bitcoin balances and active loans to BTCUSD positions," the company said in a blog post, noting that it has not made a final decision and that more details will be available Saturday. BTCUSD stands for Bitcoin/US dollar.In a socialized loss scenario, a company typically expects a bailout of some sort, either from customers or from the government. It's possible that Bitfinex customers may bear the brunt of the loss.Bitfinex did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
Two things might help these situations. 1) Paid insurance plans for 3rd party holders and crypto exchanges, and/or 2) Advanced agreements between customers and crypto exchanges regarding how compromises and thefts will be dealt with.
Regardless of what is decided here, seems likely to be subject to a lawsuit soon.
well it seems this is going to be quite an issue and clearly there are serious security issues affecting crypto currency as a whole !! Seems a bit much to ask customers to help with losses uncured by what could only be failures made on this particular exchange systems !! As i was not agreeing with the bail out of banks to big to fail, this seems just like a bit more of the same !! Something i was not expecting to see in this community !!
Copy/Paste from http://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-hack-could-cost-exchange-72-million-in-socialized-losses/