Crypto Hacks Swipe Nearly $3 Billion In 2025 Despite Fewer Attacks – Report

As we strategy the ultimate day of an enormous 12 months for the crypto trade, a current report revealed that the sector has misplaced almost $3 billion amid the emergence of recent developments from malicious actors and rising safety complexities.

2025 Crypto Losses Increase By 45%

On Tuesday, blockchain safety agency SlowMist shared its 2025 Blockchain Security & AML Annual Report, highlighting the extreme safety challenges the crypto trade confronted all year long.

According to SlowMist, the overall worth stolen from crypto hacks elevated by 46% in 2025 in comparison with 2024, a pattern beforehand observed by earlier studies. Notably, crypto theft had been extra devastating by the primary half of this 12 months than the whole lot of 2024.

A Mid-Year report by Chainalysis showed that 2025’s exercise by the tip of June revealed a considerably steeper trajectory into the tip of the primary half than any earlier 12 months, with an alarming velocity and consistency.

Now that the 12 months is close to its finish, safety incidents have price roughly $2.935 billion, in keeping with SlowMist knowledge, considerably surpassing the $2.013 billion in losses from the earlier 12 months.

However, the variety of incidents dropped year-over-year (YoY) regardless of the overall quantity of losses rising, signaling a pattern of fewer however larger-scale crypto heists. The variety of incidents declined by 51%, with 200 instances in 2025. In comparability, 2024 noticed 410 reported hacks.

The report shared that DeFi remained essentially the most incessantly focused sector this 12 months, with 126 safety incidents, accounting for roughly 63% of all hacks and whole losses of round $649 million. This represents a 37% and 62% YoY lower from 2024’s 339 incidents and $1.029 billion in losses, respectively.

Meanwhile, Centralized alternate (CEX) platforms reported 22 incidents, which accounted for $1.809 billion in losses, led by Bybit’s hack. The February assault resulted in roughly $1.46 billion being stolen in a single incident, turning into essentially the most critical and largest safety occasion of the 12 months.

Regulatory Enforcement Strengthens

Although phishing remained one of the crucial energetic schemes, scams and intrusive assaults continued to evolve in 2025, famous SlowMist. Therefore, scams have change into extra misleading and troublesome to detect, with malicious actors not counting on a single technique of assault to deceive victims:

Traditional phishing has steadily expanded into permission hijacking, malicious code execution, and supply-chain poisoning. Attacks are not reliant on a single technique; as an alternative, they more and more mix social engineering, browser exploitation, new protocol mechanics, and hybrid lure methods to type stealthy and harmful assault chains.

However, the report highlighted that crypto enforcement and sanction actions worldwide displayed a “clear pattern of escalation” this 12 months, as regulatory and regulation enforcement companies immediately intervened “in key areas of crypto-related cash laundering, fraud, sanctions evasion, and illicit financing.”

Notably, there have been 18 incidents this 12 months by which misplaced funds had been recovered or frozen. In these instances, the overall stolen funds totaled to $1.95 billion, of which almost $387 million was efficiently returned or frozen.

SlowMist concluded that “the event of the Web3 trade will not rely solely on technical innovation. (…) Organizations that may construct stronger inside safety controls, extra clear fund governance fashions, and extra complete KYT/AML assessment capabilities will achieve longer-term resilience within the subsequent cycle.”