Crypto Investor Reportedly Hacked For $2 Mln On Live Stream, Internet Calls Foul

Ian Balina, a cryptocurrency investor and advisor, was reportedly hacked for more than $2 mln in crypto while doing a live stream on his YouTube channel Sunday, April 15, that he advertised as "Hacking the System."

I ended today's live stream b/c I am being hacked.

Too... much... irony... "Hacking the system" and then 1 hour later "Hacked" /¯) pic.

"The really strange thing is, at that time no funds had been moved to Kucoin from the wallets identified as the hackers yet within minutes of that tweet having been posted/deleted, suddenly some funds were being moved to a Kucoin wallet. I was more of the opinion before that happened that he was just being stupid, holding millions of $ in crypto with poor security but this points more towards the more dodgy behaviour that others have suggested."

Another Reddit user, Hidden Troll, questioned why moving the funds and faking a hack would get Balina "Off the hook for taxes," while user bbRPSeddit explained that since Balina bought the coins "Cheap" and never sold, he owes less taxes in 2017 than "He would in 2018 selling everything."

The coming tax day in the US - tomorrow, April 17 - may have caused the market slump since the new year, as Americans could have been selling off their crypto holdings to pay an estimated $25 bln in capital gains tax due to crypto holdings, said Fundstrat's Tom Lee.

The aftermath of the reported hack has led to posters on Reddit warning about the lack of security of storing your private keys in a place accessible to hackers, listing the "Best practices" for keeping yourself hack-free.

As one post on the subreddit /r/CryptoCurrency reportedly lists Balina's three Ethereum wallet addresses, as well as the three addresses of the alleged hackers, one can see that his wallets have indeed had their coins transferred to these other addresses.

The transactions, which contain a variety of altcoins, are now labelled IanBal Hack from 1 to 4.

Balina had not responded to a request for comment by press time.