Losses from cryptocurrency hacks in 2025 reached $ 3.4 billion

In 2025, the total losses from hacking in the crypto industry exceeded $ 3.4 billion, which is slightly more than a year earlier. According to Chainalysis, almost half of this amount — $ 1.5 billion — is due to a large-scale incident with the Bybit exchange, which became the largest of the year. Analysts note that the difference between the largest attack and the average incident has reached a record ratio of more than a thousand times.

One of the main trends of the year was a sharp increase in attacks on personal cryptocurrency wallets and centralized services. The share of such incidents increased from 7.3% in 2022 to 44% in 2024. About 158,000 hacking incidents were recorded during the year, affecting at least 80,000 unique addresses. At the same time, the average amount of losses decreased from $ 1.5 billion to $ 713 million, as attackers started acting on a larger scale but for smaller amounts. The highest concentration of attacks was observed in the Ethereum and Tron networks.

Despite the development of security infrastructure, centralized platforms remain the main target. In the first quarter of 2025, they accounted for 88% of all stolen funds, and private keys remain a key risk factor. At the same time, positive changes were recorded in the DeFi sector, as the level of losses decreased due to higher security standards. In particular, in the case of Venus Protocol, the monitoring system allowed to stop the attack before it was implemented and recover all assets.

Chainalysis paid special attention to the activities of North Korean hackers who set a new anti-record. In 2025, they stole at least $ 2.02 billion, which is $ 681 million more than a year earlier. Since 2016, the total amount of losses from cybercrime related to the DPRK has reached $ 6.75 billion. The main tactic is to introduce fake IT specialists into crypto projects and then steal assets.

According to analysts, hackers from the DPRK have a systematic approach to money laundering: they split large tranches into smaller parts of up to $ 500,000 and use Chinese-language platforms, bridges, mixers, and platforms like Huione. Chainalysis warns that these actions pose a separate level of threat to the industry, and the goal for 2026 should be to detect such operations early to prevent incidents on the scale of Bybit.