Crystal Blockchain: Over $12.1 billion in losses from hackers and fraudsters over a decade

The total losses suffered by cryptocurrency platforms and their users from hackers and scammers surpassed $12 billion. That accounting was compiled by Crystal Blockchain analysts.

So far, $3.18 billion has been stolen as a result of security breaches, $7.12 billion has been stolen as a result of fraud and $1.76 billion has been lost to the #DeFi sector — @CrystalPlatform data 🤔 pic.twitter.com/Sgetd2QViG

— CIA Officer 🦞🦇🔊 (@officer_cia) December 16, 2021

From January 2011 to December 2021, analysts recorded 226 incidents.

The year 2021 was the worst — 76 cases ($4.25 billion). The largest losses were suffered by projects in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan and China. Projects from 43 countries were included in the sample.

The most common methods were: breaching exchange security (120), hacking DeFi protocols (73) and fraudulent schemes (33). In monetary terms, losses amounted to $3.18 billion, $1.76 billion and $7.12 billion respectively.

Fraud schemes Plus Token, Thodex and Wotoken topped the ranking of offenders. The creators of these pyramids siphoned off a total of $5.9 billion of client funds.

The largest breach of security occurred at the Japanese exchange Mt. Gox in February 2014. The hackers siphoned off bitcoins worth $615 million at the prevailing rate.

Not far behind was the Coincheck breach; in 2018 hackers withdrew $535 million in XEM tokens. 

The largest DeFi incident involved the Poly Network project. 10 August 2021, an unknown stole $614 million in various cryptocurrencies.

As reported, the hacker who later breached the cross-chain protocol transferred all stolen assets to the Poly Network team all stolen assets except $33 million in USDT, which Tether froze after the attack. Subsequently, as part of an agreement with the stablecoin issuer, the attacker returned the remaining assets.

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