The cryptocurrency industry loses at least $ 25 million in each hacker attack

In the cryptocurrency industry, analysts have recorded an alarming trend: the average cost of hacker attacks on protocols has stabilized at around $ 25 million, followed by a sharp drop in the value of tokens. Such data is contained in the State of Onchain Security 2026 report by Immunefi.

In 2024−2025, 191 incidents were documented, resulting in losses of $ 4.67 billion. In total, over the past five years, the number of attacks has reached 425, and the losses amounted to $ 11.9 billion. At the same time, the number of cases remains consistently high: 94 attacks in 2024 and 97 in 2025.

The average size of a hacker attack decreased to $ 2.2 million (previously $ 4.5 million), which indicates some progress in protecting against routine exploits. At the same time, average losses remain much higher at about $ 24.5 million, as individual large-scale hacks significantly affect the statistics. For example, the five largest attacks in 2024−2025 accounted for 62% of all losses, and one $ 1.5 billion Bybit incident accounted for almost half of the losses in 2025.

Centralized exchanges, although only 20 attacks were carried out, lost more than $ 2.55 billion, more than half of the total losses. This emphasizes the high risks of storing assets in custodial systems.

The tokens of the projects affected by the attacks lost about 10% of their value on average within two days of the incident. The long-term consequences are even more serious: after six months, the average drop was 61%, and 84% of assets never returned to pre-attack levels.

The report also emphasizes the «chain reaction» effect: the failure of the deUSD stablecoin in 2025 led to cascading losses in several protocols due to the reliance on collateral. Inside companies, attacks cause personnel changes, halt product development, and take at least three months to recover.

Thus, Immunefi’s research shows that while the industry is gradually improving protection against small exploits, the market remains vulnerable to rare but catastrophic attacks that define the overall security picture in the cryptocurrency world.