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- 1 Around $1.8 Billion of crypto assets has been stolen from the crypto market in 2023– Immunefi.
- 2 A significant surge in single incidents has grown from 319 in 2023 to 168 in 2022.
- 3 Approximately 13.5% of funds have been recovered from $231.7 Million in 19 theft cases.
Immunefi published its report on December 28, 2023, revealing that $1.8 Billion of funds have been wiped out from the crypto market using different hacks, including rug-pull and others.
However, a significant decline is seen in the lost funds in 2023 compared to 2022, which was around $3.9 Billion. A significant surge in single incidents has grown from 319 in 2023 to 168 in 2022.
As per the reports, overall, $1.6 Billion of crypto assets were lost in 247 events, and the majority of them are connected with decentralized exchanges and other decentralized products linked to crypto.
Around 13.5% of funds have been recovered from $231.7 Million in 19 theft cases. The list of most affected blockchains, BNB and Ethereum hold the leading position as dozens of projects based on ETH and BNB blockchain lost millions in security breaches.
Almost every year, an appreciable portion of stolen funds from the crypto industry is handled or held by the famous group of hackers in North Korea called the ‘Lazarus Group’.
Some significant hacks of 2023 are Mixin Network, which lost over 100 Million in crypto, followed by Euler Finance, Poloniex, and Multichain. It is believed that Lazarus Group played a vital role in breaching their firewalls behind the hack of Atomic Wallet, CoinsPaid, and CoinEX.
Crypto Hacks 2022
The year 2022 was a difficult year for the crypto space as over $3 Million in cryptocurrency were lost by leading crypto exchange.
According to a team of specialists monitoring United Nations sanctions, North Korea has become increasingly reliant on hacking to fund its missile and nuclear weapons development, significantly since publicly disclosed commerce has fallen as a result of sanctions and COVID-19 lockdowns.
47% of these funds were obtained using a variety of hacking and exploitation tactics. These include circumventing verification processes, market manipulation, ‘crowd looting,’ exploiting wise contract faults or loopholes, etc.
The top five bridge hacks accounted for 65% of last year’s cash. This occurs as bridges become increasingly vital for connecting many blockchain networks.
The third most common way for crypto hackers to steal money was flash loan attacks, which resulted in $0.24 Billion in stolen assets, accounting for 8.7% of losses last year. Last year, US authorities confiscated $30 Million in stolen assets from North Korean-linked hackers for the first time.
According to Chainalysis, the total amount of crypto transactions tied to criminal activities reached $20.1 Billion last year.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions stated by the author or any people named in this article are for informational ideas only and do not establish financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading crypto or stock comes with a risk of financial loss.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
