Hackers and Scammers Stole $4 Billion in Cryptocurrencies in 2025

RBK-cryptoPublicado em 2026-01-13Última atualização em 2026-01-13

Resumo

In 2025, hackers and fraudsters stole over $4 billion in cryptocurrencies, a 34.2% increase compared to the $3.01 billion stolen in 2024, according to analytics firm PeckShieldAlert. The total damage exceeded $4.04 billion, with $2.67 billion (a 24.2% annual increase) attributed to hacks and $1.37 billion (a 64.2% increase) to fraud cases. A strategic shift was noted towards a rise in scams utilizing social engineering methods, such as psychological manipulation to trick victims into revealing confidential information, which accounted for 12% of the losses. The most significant single incident was the $1.4 billion hack of the Bybit exchange in February of the previous year. An additional 22% of losses came from scams, including 'rug pulls' and pseudo-crypto investment schemes. Another key change was the increasing share of centralized services among the affected platforms. Their share of losses grew from just over 35% in 2023 to around 45% in 2024, and exceeded 70% in 2025. Only about $334.9 million of the stolen funds were frozen or returned during the year, a decrease from the $488.5 million recovered in 2024.

Damage to crypto industry participants increased by 34% compared to 2024

Due to hacks and fraud with cryptocurrencies in 2025, more than $4 billion was lost, according to analysts at PeckShieldAlert. According to their data, this is 34.2% more than in 2024, when $3.01 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen.

Damage from hacks and fraud with cryptocurrencies in 2025. Source: PeckShield

The total damage in 2025 exceeded $4.04 billion. Of this, $2.67 billion came from losses due to hacks (a 24.2% year-on-year increase) and $1.37 billion was attributed to cases of fraud (a 64.2% increase).

RBC-Crypto Telegram Channel — subscribe and stay up to date with the most important and relevant news about cryptocurrencies.

Join the RBC-Crypto forum on Telegram to discuss news and trends in the crypto world.

The report emphasizes that a strategic shift is occurring — the number of thefts using social engineering methods (psychological techniques and manipulations that force the victim to disclose confidential information that the attacker could use to steal funds) is growing. Analysts attributed 12% of the losses in 2025 to incidents where such methods were used.

66% of the total damage came from hacks, the most serious being the theft of $1.4 billion from the Bybit exchange in February of last year. Another 22% of losses came from scams, including "rug pulls" (when developers withdraw liquidity at the price peak) and pseudo-cryptoinvestments.

Another important change was the increase in the share of centralized services among the affected platforms. If in 2023 they accounted for just over 35%, in 2024 it was already around 45%, and in 2025 — over 70%.

Over the year, only about $334.9 million of the stolen funds was frozen or returned. PeckShield noted a decrease compared to 2024, when $488.5 million was recovered.

Cardano Founder: Trump's Policy Pushed Suburbs Away from Cryptocurrency

Former New York 'Bitcoin Mayor' Faces Charges in Crypto Fraud

The First Bitcoin Transaction Was Executed 17 Years Ago. Who Received These Coins

Perguntas relacionadas

QHow much was stolen in cryptocurrencies due to hacks and fraud in 2025 according to PeckShieldAlert?

A$4 billion was stolen in cryptocurrencies in 2025.

QWhat was the percentage increase in losses from crypto hacks and fraud in 2025 compared to 2024?

ALosses increased by 34.2% in 2025 compared to 2024.

QWhat was the largest single crypto theft incident mentioned in the report for 2025?

AThe largest single theft was the $1.4 billion hack of the Bybit exchange in February of the previous year.

QWhat significant shift in attack methods did the PeckShield report highlight for 2025?

AThe report highlighted a strategic shift towards an increase in the number of scams using social engineering methods, which accounted for 12% of the losses.

QWhat percentage of the total losses in 2025 were attributed to centralized services?

AOver 70% of the total losses in 2025 were attributed to centralized services.

Leituras Relacionadas

Iran’s Crypto Lifeline Hit As US Freezes $344 Million In Funds

The US Treasury has frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency tied to Iranian military and political groups, specifically targeting two Tron blockchain wallets connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hizballah. This action follows reports that Iran was collecting Bitcoin payments from ships for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The freeze occurred just one day after stablecoin issuer Tether locked the same amount of funds at the request of US law enforcement. The move is part of broader US efforts to disrupt Iran's ability to generate and move funds, highlighting the limitations of using cryptocurrency as a sanctions workaround when centralized issuers comply with enforcement actions.

bitcoinistHá 19m

Iran’s Crypto Lifeline Hit As US Freezes $344 Million In Funds

bitcoinistHá 19m

Amidst the Volatility in the Crypto Market, Who is Buying Against the Trend?

"In a volatile crypto market downturn of Q1 2026, institutional players demonstrated divergent strategies. While Bitcoin fell over 25% and Ethereum dropped 35%, key institutions accumulated: corporate treasuries like Strategy (MicroStrategy) added over $10 billion in BTC, sovereign wealth funds like Mubadala increased IBIT holdings by 46%, and major banks launched crypto services and ETFs. Notably, 26 new crypto ETFs were filed or launched under streamlined SEC rules, including bank-led products from Morgan Stanley and BlackRock’s staking ETH ETF. VC funding saw concentration: total investment reached ~$5 billion, but deal count plummeted 49%. Three mega-deals—BVNK ($1.8B), Kalshi ($1B), and Polymarket ($600M)—accounted for half the quarter’s funding. Investment shifted from DeFi/NFTs to payments, prediction markets, and regulated CeFi infrastructure. Selling pressure came from hedge funds (e.g., Brevan Howard cut IBIT by 85%) and Bitcoin miners liquidating holdings. The U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve saw zero additions, highlighting that real buying came from corporations and sovereign funds, not governments. The institutional crypto landscape is bifurcating: long-term holders accumulate while short-term traders exit, signaling a foundation for the next cycle."

marsbitHá 42m

Amidst the Volatility in the Crypto Market, Who is Buying Against the Trend?

marsbitHá 42m

Hands-on with Hunyuan Hy3 Preview: Tencent's AI, Finally Competitive?

Tencent's Hunyuan AI team has released its latest language model, Hy3 preview, marking a significant step forward for the company's AI capabilities. With 295B total parameters and support for 256K context length, the model employs a mixture-of-experts architecture. It shows improvements in complex logic, instruction following, contextual learning, code generation, and agent task execution. In testing, Hy3 preview demonstrated strong performance in multi-step logical reasoning but showed occasional instability in identifying traps in trick questions. It performed well in extracting key information from disordered meeting transcripts and accurately followed new linguistic rules. As an AI agent, it successfully built functional applications like a Snake game and generated data analysis dashboards, though it sometimes fell short in fully completing complex open-ended tasks. In natural language use, it produced coherent and stylistically appropriate narratives with reduced “AI-like” tone. Priced competitively, Hy3 preview is already integrated into Tencent’s key products, including Tencent Cloud and WorkBuddy. While not leading in every benchmark, it represents a solid, practical model that signals Tencent’s renewed momentum in AI development.

marsbitHá 3h

Hands-on with Hunyuan Hy3 Preview: Tencent's AI, Finally Competitive?

marsbitHá 3h

From Theft to Re-entry: How Was $292 Million "Laundered"?

A sophisticated crypto laundering operation was executed following the $292 million hack of Kelp DAO on April 18. The attack, attributed to the North Korean Lazarus group, began with anonymous infrastructure preparation using Tornado Cash to fund wallets untraceably. The hacker exploited a vulnerability in Kelp’s cross-chain bridge, stealing 116,500 rsETH. To avoid crashing the market, the attacker used Aave and Compound as laundering tools—depositing the stolen rsETH as collateral to borrow $190 million in clean, liquid ETH. This move triggered a bank run on Aave, causing an $8 billion drop in TVL. After consolidating funds, the attacker fragmented them across hundreds of wallets to evade detection. A major breakpoint was THORChain, where over $460 million in volume—30 times its usual activity—was processed in 24 hours, converting ETH into Bitcoin. This shift to Bitcoin’s UTXO model exponentially increased tracing complexity by shattering funds into countless untraceable fragments. The final destination was Tron-based USDT, the primary channel for illicit crypto flows. From there, funds were cashed out via OTC brokers in China and Southeast Asia, using unlicensed underground banks and UnionPay networks outside Western sanctions scope. Ultimately, the laundered money supports North Korea’s weapons programs, which rely heavily on crypto hacking for foreign currency. The incident underscores structural challenges in DeFi: its openness, composability, and lack of central control make such laundering not just possible, but inherently difficult to prevent.

marsbitHá 3h

From Theft to Re-entry: How Was $292 Million "Laundered"?

marsbitHá 3h

Behind DeepSeek V4's Stunning Debut: Silicon Valley Is 'Building Walls,' China Is 'Paving Roads'

China's AI landscape is witnessing a strategic divergence from Silicon Valley’s closed-source competition to a collaborative open-source ecosystem. On April 24, DeepSeek released V4, a top-ranked open-source model on Hugging Face, featuring breakthroughs like million-token context length with minimal KV cache and native support for domestic chips like Huawei’s Ascend. Similarly, Kimi’s K2.6, released days earlier, also adopted open-source principles. Unlike U.S. giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic—locked in revenue disputes and tactical product clashes—Chinese firms embrace shared innovation. DeepSeek and Kimi openly build on each other’s advances, like the MLA architecture and Muon optimizer, avoiding redundant R&D and driving down costs. DeepSeek V4 focused on pushing base model capabilities, while Kimi specialized in Agent-based applications. Although U.S. firms lead in revenue and valuation, China’s open-source models achieve comparable performance at a fraction of the cost (e.g., DeepSeek V3 trained for $5.58M vs. GPT-5’s $500M+). With token usage growing exponentially, China’s collaborative model promises scalable, affordable AI built on domestic hardware, shaping a more accessible path to AGI.

marsbitHá 3h

Behind DeepSeek V4's Stunning Debut: Silicon Valley Is 'Building Walls,' China Is 'Paving Roads'

marsbitHá 3h

Trading

Spot
Futuros

Artigos em Destaque

Como comprar 4

Bem-vindo à HTX.com!Tornámos a compra de 4 (4) simples e conveniente.Segue o nosso guia passo a passo para iniciar a tua jornada no mundo das criptos.Passo 1: cria a tua conta HTXUtiliza o teu e-mail ou número de telefone para te inscreveres numa conta gratuita na HTX.Desfruta de um processo de inscrição sem complicações e desbloqueia todas as funcionalidades.Obter a minha contaPasso 2: vai para Comprar Cripto e escolhe o teu método de pagamentoCartão de crédito/débito: usa o teu visa ou mastercard para comprar 4 (4) instantaneamente.Saldo: usa os fundos da tua conta HTX para transacionar sem problemas.Terceiros: adicionamos métodos de pagamento populares, como Google Pay e Apple Pay, para aumentar a conveniência.P2P: transaciona diretamente com outros utilizadores na HTX.Mercado de balcão (OTC): oferecemos serviços personalizados e taxas de câmbio competitivas para os traders.Passo 3: armazena teu 4 (4)Depois de comprar o teu 4 (4), armazena-o na tua conta HTX.Alternativamente, podes enviá-lo para outro lugar através de transferência blockchain ou usá-lo para transacionar outras criptomoedas.Passo 4: transaciona 4 (4)Transaciona facilmente 4 (4) no mercado à vista da HTX.Acede simplesmente à tua conta, seleciona o teu par de trading, executa as tuas transações e monitoriza em tempo real.Oferecemos uma experiência de fácil utilização tanto para principiantes como para traders experientes.

596 Visualizações TotaisPublicado em {updateTime}Atualizado em 2025.10.20

Como comprar 4

Discussões

Bem-vindo à Comunidade HTX. Aqui, pode manter-se informado sobre os mais recentes desenvolvimentos da plataforma e obter acesso a análises profissionais de mercado. As opiniões dos utilizadores sobre o preço de 4 (4) são apresentadas abaixo.

活动图片

Categorias popularesright-arrow

Etiquetas Popularesright-arrow