Cryptocurrency Market Losses to Hackers Reach $2.1 Billion in Six Months

In the first half of 2025, cybercriminals extracted $2.1 billion from the cryptocurrency industry, according to a report by TRM Labs.

Infrastructure attacks, accounting for over 80% of the losses, involved the theft of private keys, seed phrases, and frontend spoofing. Often, perpetrators employed social engineering or insiders. TRM Labs data indicates that the average damage from such incidents is ten times higher than from other breaches.

An additional 12% of losses are attributed to vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols, such as flash loan exploits and reentrancy attacks.

The total losses for the first six months of 2025 nearly matched the entire year of 2024 and exceeded the record of the first half of 2022 by 10%. A significant contributor to this figure was the February Bybit exchange hack amounting to $1.5 billion. Analysts linked it to North Korean hackers. This incident raised the average damage per attack to $30 million—twice that of the previous year.

TRM Labs estimates that North Korea-linked groups stole $1.6 billion, representing 70% of the total for the half-year. The report also mentions the June hack of the Iranian exchange Nobitex. The pro-Israeli group Gonjeshke Darande claimed responsibility and published the platform’s source code.

Analysts urged projects to bolster their defenses. They recommend implementing multi-factor authentication, enhancing cold storage, and addressing insider threats. The company also highlighted the importance of cooperation between international law enforcement and industry coordination.

“The record thefts in the first half of 2025 are a call to action for the creation of a collective and strategically sound security system,” concluded TRM Labs.

Earlier in the first quarter, cybercriminals stole $1.64 billion in 40 incidents.

In May, the damage to the crypto industry from hacks reached $244 million.