There’s something uniquely agonising about having your cryptocurrency stolen. All transactions are recorded on a digital ledger, known as a blockchain, so even if someone takes your money and puts it in their own crypto wallet, it is still visible online.
“You can see your money there on the public blockchain, but there’s nothing you can do to get it back,” says Helen, who lost around $315,000 (£250,000) to thieves.
She likens it to watching a burglar pile up your prized possessions on the other side of an impassable chasm.
For seven years Helen and her husband Richard (not his real name), both UK residents, had been buying and stacking up crypto coins called Cardano.
They liked the idea of investing in a digital asset that had the potential to rise dramatically in value, unlike funds saved in more conventional ways. They knew it was riskier, but they were careful to keep their digital keys safe.
But somehow hackers got into their cloud storage account, where they kept information about their crypto wallets and how to access them.
