Funds stolen
by hackers from cryptocurrency platforms fell by over 50% in 2023 compared to
the previous year. However, the number of individual hacking incidents rose,
indicating that hacking remains a significant threat for crypto investors.
In 2022,
hackers stole a record $3.7 billion from crypto platforms. But, according to a
new report from the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, in 2023, that
figure dropped to around $1.7 billion, representing a decrease of 54%.
The main
driver of this drop was a major decline in decentralized finance (DeFi)
hacking. After exploding in 2021 and 2022, with over $3 billion stolen in each
year, funds stolen from DeFi protocols fell by nearly 64% to $1.1 billion in
2023.
Despite
this overall drop, Chainalysis reported that the number of individual crypto
hacking incidents grew from 219 in 2022 to 231 in 2023. It is worth emphasizing
that the total value of stolen assets has remained at record levels for the
third year in a row. It was clearly below $1 billion in previous years,
exceeding this threshold only once in 2018.
“There’s
been a worrying trend in the escalation of both the frequency and severity of
attacks within the ecosystem,” Mar Gimenez-Aguilar, the Lead Security Architect
and Researcher at our…
