The cumulative damage to cryptocurrency platforms and their users from the actions of hackers and scammers exceeded $12 billion. Such calculations were made by Crystal Blockchain analysts.
From January 2011 to December 2021, experts recorded 226 incidents.
The anti—record holder was 2021 – 76 cases ($4.25 billion). The greatest damage was caused to projects from the USA, Great Britain, South Korea, Japan and China. The sample includes projects from 43 countries.
The most common methods were: bypassing the security system of exchanges (120), hacking DeFi protocols (73) and fraudulent schemes (33). In value terms, the losses amounted to $3.18 billion, $1.76 billion and $7.12 billion, respectively.
Fraudulent schemes Plus Token, Thodex and Wotoken took the first three lines of the anti-rating. The creators of these pyramids have appropriated a total of $5.9 billion of client funds.
The largest hacking of the security system occurred at the Japanese exchange Mt. Gox in February 2014. Hackers withdrew bitcoins for $ 615 million at the exchange rate at that time.
A little less damage from hacking the Coincheck platform. In 2018, hackers withdrew $535 million in XEM tokens from the platform.
The largest incident in the DeFi sphere is related to the Poly Network project. On August 10, 2021, an unknown person stole $614 million in various cryptocurrencies.
Recall that the hacker who subsequently hacked the inter-network protocol transferred to the Poly Network team all the stolen assets with the exception of $33 million in USDT, which Tether froze after the attack. Later, as a result of an agreement with the issuer of the stablecoin, the organizer of the attack returned the remaining assets.