Stolen Crypto Assets in 2025 Have Already Overtaken Last Year’s Total

According to data released on 1 July by blockchain security company Certik, 144 hacking or scam incidents took place in the second quarter of 2025. This brings the yearly total to 344, with wallet compromise and phishing the two most common means of theft. 

Slow recovery 

Authorities and exchanges have managed to recover only a small fraction of the stolen cryptocurrencies. 

Excluding all assets that have been returned or frozen by exchanges, the total amount stolen stands at $2.29 billion, an increase from the $1.98 billion that Certik estimates was taken throughout 2024. 

Whale Attacks 

Certik found that two large-scale attacks made up $1.8 billion, or nearly half of all total losses so far this year. 

In one notable incident, hackers from North Korea pilfered $1.5 billion worth of digital assets from Bybit, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Unknown hackers also targeted the decentralized exchange, Cetus, making off with $220 million. 

Through the Cracks 

Anonymity in crypto transactions allows hackers to obscure their identities by routing funds through mixers, decentralized exchanges and thousands of wallet addresses. 

While blockchain ledgers are transparent, the pseudonymous nature of wallet ownership makes it extremely difficult for authorities to trace and recover stolen assets.

Commenting earlier this year on the challenge of recovering funds stolen during the Bybit hack, a spokesperson from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation stated:

“Actors are proceeding rapidly and have converted some of the stolen assets to bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains.”