Crypto Exchange Hacks and Security Statistics 2026: Losses by Year

Hackers stole over $3.4 billion in crypto from January through early December 2025, and the February compromise of Bybit alone accounted for $1.5 billion of that total, Chainalysis reported. CertiK, which tracks Web3 hacks, scams and exploits, put total losses in 2025 at $3,352,850,816, versus $2,446,285,251 in 2024. The two trackers land close together, and the crypto exchange hacks and security statistics below describe a year decided by one exchange breach.

The pattern carried into this year, when Bitget’s security systems detected unauthorized transfers from some of its hot wallets on September 24, 2026. The exchange now estimates the loss at approximately $388 million. At DMM Bitcoin, Bybit, Coinbase, and Bitget, attackers came in through a vendor, paid support staff, or a third-party tool. None of the four started with the exchange’s own core code.

Key Takeaways

• The top three hacks in 2025 account for 69% of all service losses, and funds stolen in the largest attacks are now 1,000 times larger than those stolen in the typical incident.
• Excluding Bybit, H1 2025 losses stood at approximately $1.03 billion, making H1 2026’s figure roughly 28% higher on a like-for-like basis, per CertiK.
• North Korean hackers stole $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, a 51% year-over-year increase.
• Bybit suffered an estimated $1.45 billion loss after attackers compromised the development environment of a third-party multi-signature wallet service provider, CertiK found, a vendor-side entry point repeated at other exchanges.
• Personal wallet theft incidents surged to 158,000 in 2025, nearly triple the 54,000 recorded in 2022.
• Complaints to the FBI involving a cryptocurrency descriptor reported $11,366,669,732 in losses in 2025.

Editor’s Choice

• Largest exchange hack, Bybit: Approximately $1.5 billion, on or about February 21, 2025.
• Bitget hack, September 2026: Approximately $388 million.
• North Korea’s all-time crypto theft: $6.75 billion.
• Web3 losses, first half of 2026: $1,315,676,432 across 344 incidents.
• Value stolen from individual victims, 2025: $713 million.
• Crypto investment fraud losses reported to the FBI, 2025: $7.2 billion.

Crypto Exchange Hacks and Security Statistics: Theft Totals by Year

• In 2024, funds stolen increased by approximately 21.07% year-over-year to $2.2 billion, and the number of individual hacking incidents increased from 282 in 2023 to 303 in 2024.
• Over $2.17 billion was stolen from cryptocurrency services by mid-2025, making the year more devastating than the entirety of 2024.
• Per CertiK, Bybit accounted for a disproportionately large share of annual losses at $1,447,063,421, and without it the industry would have recorded a net decrease in funds stolen compared to 2024.
• The Web3 sector experienced 630 security incidents in 2025, and the average loss per incident surged to $5.32 million, up 66.6%.
• The median amount stolen in 2025 was $103,996, a 35.75% year-over-year decrease.
• Compromises of centralized services, through attacks on private key infrastructure and signing processes, accounted for 88% of losses in Q1 2025.
• Both trackers put 2025 theft well above the 2024 level, the anchor for the wider cryptocurrency fraud statistics on CoinLaw.

Source: Chainalysis 2025 and 2026 Crypto Crime Reports; CertiK Hack3D 2025 Report

About This Data

Figures come from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis and security firm CertiK. The FBI, its Internet Crime Complaint Center, a Coinbase SEC filing, and the incident disclosures of Bitget and Blockstream fill in the rest. Only published reports, regulatory filings, and company notices from December 2024 through October 2026 qualified. Chainalysis and CertiK use different scopes, so their totals appear side by side and are never merged; figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when these sources publish new editions.

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Major Crypto Exchange Hacks Since 2024

• North Korea was responsible for the theft of approximately $1.5 billion in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange Bybit on or about February 21, 2025, according to an FBI public service announcement.
• At $1.5 billion, the Bybit incident represents the largest crypto theft in history and accounts for approximately 69% of all funds stolen from services in the first half of 2025.
• North Korean cyber actors stole cryptocurrency worth $308 million from the Japan-based company DMM in May 2024, a loss of 4,502.9 BTC.
• Notable centralized service hacks in 2024 include DMM Bitcoin (May 2024; $305 million) and WazirX (July 2024; $234.9 million).
• Bitget’s affected amount is estimated at approximately $388 million, involving 12 wallet addresses associated with hot or warm wallets.
• DeFi still accounted for the largest share of stolen assets in the first quarter of 2024, but centralized services were the most targeted in Q2 and Q3.
• Chainalysis values the DMM loss slightly below the FBI, so the chart uses the FBI figure; older incidents sit in the largest crypto hacks on record.

Recent Developments

• October 1, 2026: Chainalysis said the theft brings the total value of crypto stolen by North Korea-attributed actors in 2026 to more than $1 billion, after tracing the Bitget funds.
• September 30, 2026: Mandiant and SlowMist both identified the compromise of third-party security products that ultimately enabled unauthorized access to Bitget Exchange’s wallet environment.
• September 24, 2026: Bitget’s September 24 notice put funds affected at approximately $351.6 million, within a User Protection Fund that held over $464 million.
• September 6, 2026: An attacker exploited a vulnerability in Elements, inflating the LBTC supply by approximately 4,000 LBTC, and later returned 3,400 BTC, Blockstream reported.
• August 6, 2026: Chainalysis reported that home invasions now account for 37% of violent crypto incidents in 2026, up from 26% in 2023.
• July 8, 2026: CertiK reported that April was the most costly month of H1 2026, with approximately $651 million in losses across 61 incidents.

Crypto Hack Losses in the First Half of 2026

• A total of $1,315,676,432 was lost across 344 incidents in the first half of 2026, a 46.8% decrease in total losses compared to H1 2025.
• H1 2025 was defined by the Bybit wallet compromise, a single $1.45 billion event that alone accounted for 58.7% of that period’s losses.
• The total value of funds frozen and returned was $115,311,507, leading to adjusted total losses of $1,200,364,925.
• The average loss per incident was $3,824,641, and the median loss per incident was $138,703.
• The Kelp DAO RPC compromise ($291 million, April 18) and the Drift Protocol breach ($285 million, April 1) together account for nearly 44% of all H1 losses.
• When accounting only for confirmed, unrecovered losses, H1 2025 net losses reached $2.29 billion.

Source: CertiK Hack3D H1 2025 and H1 2026 Reports

Key finding: CertiK’s H1 2026 report put losses roughly 28% higher on a like-for-like basis once Bybit is removed and concluded that the underlying security environment has not improved. The lower headline total comes from a missing outlier, and nothing in the per-incident data suggests exchanges or protocols became harder to breach.

Crypto Hack Losses by Attack Vector

• Wallet compromise was the most costly attack vector in H1 2026, with $444,531,691 stolen across 33 incidents.
• Phishing was the second most costly, with $366,312,027 stolen across 63 incidents, and losses declined by only 10.8% while incident volume fell 52.3%.
• Code vulnerability accounted for $151,591,472 stolen across 204 incidents, the highest incident count of any single vector, a pattern tracked in the smart contract security and audit data.
• Supply Chain was the most costly attack vector in 2025, with $1,450,914,902 lost across 2 incidents.
• Phishing compromises followed, with $722,885,398 stolen across 248 incidents in 2025.
• Private key compromises accounted for the largest share of stolen crypto in 2024, at 43.8%.

Can a cryptocurrency be hacked?

Yes, though losses rarely come from breaking a blockchain’s cryptography. Centralized services are experiencing increasingly large losses due to sophisticated attacks on private key infrastructure and signing processes, according to Chainalysis. Software can fail too: a flaw in Elements let one attacker inflate the LBTC supply by approximately 4,000 LBTC in September 2026.

Crypto Hack Losses by Blockchain

• Ethereum experienced the highest number of security incidents in 2025, with 310 hacks, scams, and exploits leading to $1,697,833,313 in losses.
• Hackers also heavily targeted Bitcoin, with $528,221,350 stolen across 22 incidents.
• Security breaches affecting multiple chains accounted for $460,769,793 in losses across 29 incidents.
• Ethereum experienced 153 hacks, scams, and exploits in H1 2026, leading to $522,814,367 in losses.
• Solana saw fewer incidents but outsized losses of $315,069,960, driven primarily by the Drift Protocol exploit.

North Korea’s Role in Crypto Exchange Hacks

• In 2025, North Korean hackers stole at least $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency ($681 million more than 2024), with DPRK attacks accounting for a record 76% of all service compromises.
• In 2024, North Korea-affiliated hackers stole $1.34 billion across 47 incidents, representing 61% of the total amount stolen for the year.
• In 2023, North Korea-affiliated hackers stole approximately $660.50 million across 20 incidents.
• The FBI tied the $308 million DMM theft to TraderTraitor activity, which is often characterized by targeted social engineering directed at multiple employees of the same company simultaneously.
• TraderTraitor actors converted some of the stolen Bybit assets to Bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains.

Why it matters: Chainalysis found that North Korean hackers stole $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, pushing their all-time total to $6.75 billion despite fewer attacks, often by embedding IT workers inside crypto services. For an exchange, the security perimeter now runs through hiring, vendor access and every employee who can approve a transfer.

Bitget Hack Statistics

• The Bitget incident involved activity across 11 blockchains, and cold wallets across all chains were not affected.
• Based on the investigation to date, private-key compromise has also been ruled out.
• In the first three hours after the exploit, $387 million left Bitget across 23 transfers.
• In the first three hours, the stolen funds landed on four chains: Ethereum (49.7%), XRP (40.8%), Zcash (7.6%), and Tron (1.8%).
• Bitget’s reconciliation system detected a significant discrepancy at 19:05 UTC, and the risk-control system automatically blocked withdrawal requests across the platform.
• The approximately $388 million loss equals at most 83.6% of the over $464 million that Bitget said its User Protection Fund held on September 24.
• The exchange’s wider user and trading figures sit in the Bitget platform statistics.

That three-hour fund split shows where the attacker moved stolen assets first; the table below lists the confirmed developments Bitget reported as the incident unfolded.

Source: Bitget incident timeline, September 2026

How Crypto Exchange Breaches Happen

• In late March 2024, a North Korean cyber actor masquerading as a recruiter on LinkedIn contacted an employee at Ginco, a Japan-based enterprise cryptocurrency wallet software company.
• At Bybit, attackers compromised the development environment of a third-party multi-signature wallet service provider, inserting malicious code into the signing workflow and effectively bypassing multi-approval safeguards.
• Coinbase said the threat actor appears to have obtained its information by paying multiple contractors or employees working in support roles outside the United States.
• In its Form 8-K filing, Coinbase preliminarily estimated expenses within the range of approximately $180 million to $400 million relating to remediation costs and voluntary customer reimbursements.
• At Bitget, the compromise of third-party security products ultimately enabled unauthorized access to the exchange’s wallet environment.
• Many attackers have developed methods to exploit third-party wallet integrations and trick legitimate signers into authorizing malicious transactions, Chainalysis said.

Source: FBI 2024 and 2025; CertiK 2025; Coinbase Form 8-K, May 2025; Bitget, September 2026

The takeaway: Coinbase’s breach did not involve the compromise of passwords or private keys, yet the company estimated expenses of approximately $180 million to $400 million. Each of the four breaches in the table began with a vendor, paid support staff or a third-party tool, so an exchange’s security now depends on everyone who can reach its systems.

Is it safe to leave crypto on exchanges?

Exchange custody adds platform risk that self-custody does not carry. Bitget said its cold wallets remained fully secure and that the loss fell within its User Protection Fund, while Chainalysis found that centralized platforms remain vulnerable to advanced threats that can circumvent cold wallet controls. The split between hot wallet exposure and cold storage is the first detail to check.

Personal Wallet Compromise Statistics

• Personal wallet compromises increased from just 7.3% of total stolen value in 2022 to 44% in 2024.
• Based on lower-bound estimates, personal wallet compromises account for 20% of all value stolen in 2025.
• In 2025, the share would have been 37% if it weren’t for the outsized impact of the Bybit attack.
• Unique victims increased from 40,000 in 2022 to at least 80,000 in 2025.
• The total USD value stolen from individual victims declined from 2024’s peak of $1.5 billion to $713 million in 2025.
• Personal wallet compromises made up 23.35% of all stolen fund activity YTD in 2025 at Chainalysis’s mid-year count (see the phishing and wallet drainer attacks data).

The share of value stolen from personal wallets is higher than in 2022, and raw case volume jumped too: personal-wallet theft incidents climbed from 54,000 in 2022 to 158,000 in 2025, with unique victims rising to at least 80,000, as the next chart shows.

How common is crypto theft really?

Theft is frequent at the individual level. Chainalysis counted 158,000 individual wallet compromises affecting 80,000 unique victims in 2025, while CertiK recorded 630 security incidents across Web3 platforms in the same year. Most individual thefts are small; the dollar totals are driven by a handful of platform breaches.

Crypto Fraud Losses Reported to the FBI

• Complaints with a cryptocurrency descriptor totaled 181,565, with $11,366,669,732 in reported losses in 2025.
• Cryptocurrency investment fraud was the highest source of financial losses to Americans in 2025, with $7.2 billion reported in losses.
• Crypto investment fraud drew 61,559 complaints and $7.228 billion in losses, a 48% increase in complaints and a 25% increase in losses from 2024, much of it from the long-con pig butchering scams.
• Victims aged 60 and over reported $2,763,921,910 in crypto investment fraud losses across 13,685 complaints.
• Crypto ATM and kiosk complaints reached 13,460, with $389 million in losses, a 58% increase in losses from 2024.

Crypto investment fraud carried the largest losses, at $7.228 billion; the chart below breaks those losses down by the age group of the victims the FBI identified in 2025.

Wrench Attack Statistics

• Annual value stolen in violent attacks peaked at $58 million in 2025, the highest on record, with 2026 already at $30 million through mid-year.
• Kidnappings have remained relatively stable year-over-year in terms of share of total attacks.
• On-chain analysis of stolen funds reveals a spectrum, from criminals who cash out directly to centralized exchanges to highly embedded actors who route funds through laundering services.
• Exchanges sit on both sides of this crime: they hold the funds attackers want and receive the funds less careful attackers try to cash out.

Source: Chainalysis, August 2026

Conclusion

Thieves took over $3.4 billion in crypto last year, and Bitget’s breach, estimated at approximately $388 million, shows the exchange threat has not eased. The common thread across the four breaches compared above is access: a wallet vendor’s employee, a wallet provider’s development environment, support staff apparently paid by the attacker, and third-party security products. Cold storage and protection funds limit the damage, but they do not close those doors.

CertiK warned that state-sponsored actors, most notably the Lazarus Group, have consistently escalated operations as each calendar year progresses. If that pattern holds, the closing months of the year carry the most exchange risk, and the exchange hack losses recorded so far are unlikely to be the final count.

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