According to analysts at Global Ledger, in 2024, hackers stole a total of $1.94 billion from the cryptocurrency market. Centralized exchanges (CEX) and centralized financial services (CeFi) became the primary targets for malicious actors.
This is reported by Finway
In 2025, within the first two months, losses from hacker attacks had already reached $1.89 billion, nearly matching the figures from the previous year. The report states that in 2024, 265 registered incidents were recorded, resulting in the theft of $1.94 billion. During the first two months of 2025, hacker attacks caused damages amounting to $1.89 billion.
Sector Losses and Reasons for Attacks
In 2024, the largest losses were incurred by centralized exchanges, which lost about $794.98 million, primarily due to malicious activities related to hot wallets. In turn, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms suffered losses of $491 million due to smart contract vulnerabilities.
Centralized financial services (CeFi) experienced losses of $886.4 million from 15 attacks, while the DeFi sector faced 111 attacks with total losses of $560.7 million. The main causes of the attacks include the compromise of private keys, leading to losses of $930 million, as well as the exploitation of smart contracts amounting to $369.8 million.
Trends and Uses of Stolen Funds
Among the main uses of stolen funds in 2024, the following stand out:
- mixers (Tornado Cash, Wasabi, and others) — $763.48 million;
- transfers to exchanges — $206.66 million;
- cross-chain transactions — $84.7 million.
“Hacker groups supported by North Korea are suspected of stealing at least $659.7 million through five major attacks that made it into the top twenty crypto incidents of 2024,” the report states.
Experts also noted a sharp spike in hacker activity in 2025, linked to the record breach of the Bybit exchange, which resulted in damages of $1.46 billion. This attack is attributed to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus.
Additionally, analysts at Hacken reported record losses in the Web3 sector amounting to $1.98 billion due to hacker attacks in the first quarter of 2025. North Korean hackers are using a scheme of impersonating IT professionals working remotely to gain access to corporate data of European companies and demanding ransom for it.