The cryptocurrency sector is proving to be a prime target for hackers. This is a grim reality for the first half of this year, with losses already almost equivalent to the total for the whole of 2024. We take stock.
The amount stolen in crypto hacks skyrockets in 2025
Despite the efforts of its developers, the cryptocurrency sector is regularly exposed to hacks. This reality affects centralized platforms as much as decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
Most of the time, hackers exploit flaws in the code of the structures concerned to steal fortunes in cryptocurrencies. The latest record in this field belongs to the Bybit platform, which lost $1.5 billion last February.
As a result, 2025 is already shaping up to be one of the worst years on record. And the recent report from on-chain security firm TRM Labs certainly doesn’t paint a rosy picture, with an estimated cumulative total of more than $2.1 billion for the first half of the year. A record.
The first half of 2025 was a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, with more than $2.1 billion stolen in at least 75 separate hacks and exploits.
TRM Labs
A worrying geopolitical dimension
The figures are bad, and even more worrying when TRM Labs takes the time to put them into perspective. Indeed, this $2.1 billion represents a 10% increase on the previous record set in the first half of 2022. But that’s not all. The provisional total for the first six months of this year “is almost equivalent to the total amount stolen during the whole of 2024.”
This alarming finding is accompanied by a reality that is no less alarming. North Korea—and its notorious Lazarus hacker group—is emerging as the main culprit behind this large-scale crypto siphoning, with $1.6 billion on the clock, or 70% of the total funds stolen during this period. This new geopolitical factor has recently been brought back into the spotlight with the hack of the Iranian exchange Nobitex, claimed by a group linked to Israel just a few days ago.
In fact, infrastructure attacks—the theft of private keys or seed phrases and front-end compromises—account for 80% of the funds stolen. Exploits of vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols account for a total of 12%. But the real highlight, according to TRM Labs experts, is “the escalation of strategic intent by state actors and other geopolitically motivated groups” in this area.
