Unpacking the big hack of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account – the losses, the reactions, and the important takeaways on online safety.

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Hey everyone,

I have got some urgent news to share.

Something big went down in the crypto world recently, and we must talk about it.

Let us break it down so you can understand what happened and how to protect yourself in the future.

What Happened Exactly?

So, you know Vitalik Buterin.

He is one of the guys who started Ethereum, a big deal in crypto.

Well, his social media account on X (it used to be Twitter) got hacked!

His dad, Dmitry Buterin, was the one who told everyone about it.

The hackers posted a post on Vitalik’s account saying something about a “Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum” and shared a link for a free NFT (a kind of digital collectible).

But guess what?

It was all a big lie to steal money from people.

How Much Was Stolen?

It is hard to believe, but people who clicked the link lost more than $691,000.

That is a whole lot of money!

One person, Bokky Poobah on X, even said he lost several special digital collectibles called CryptoPunks.

To give you an idea of their worth, one of those digital collectibles (CryptoPunk #3983) is priced at around $250,543! Yeah, it is a big deal.

What Are People Saying?

The internet is buzzing with talks about what happened.

Satoshi 767 thinks Vitalik needs to care more for his account’s security.

He feels Vitalik should apologize by giving back to the people who lost their money and stuff.

However, another guy, ZachXBT, who knows a lot about blockchain, says we cannot just blame Vitalik.

Being a famous person means hackers are always trying to find ways to break into his account, and this could have happened in many ways, not just because of a mistake from Vitalik.