I wonder how this compares to all the money lost through phishing scams in traditional systems by people clicking on bad links.
FTX wasn’t hacked. This was likely an inside job and someone is probably laughing all the way to the bank.
I would bet my life that most of these hacks are done by insiders. Whether it’s a rogue developer or them leaving a backdoor open on purpose.
What are the biggest hacks in crypto over the past decade?
(1) The first one is the Ronin Network hack, where the hacker took $625 million. This was discovered on March 29, 2022, when Ronin Network revealed a loss of 173,600 ETH and 25,500,000 USDC.
(2) Close behind is the $600 million stolen from Poly Network’s DeFi cross-chain platform in 2021. However, the hacker returned all the stolen funds after some drama, getting a $500,000 reward for discovering a flaw in the system and even a job offer.
(3) In 2022, Binance Smart Chain also faced a hack that saw it lose 2,000,000 BNB worth about $566 million.
(4) Recently, Huobi’s CEX, which has Justin Sun as an advisor, was also hacked for 5,000 ETH, worth around $8 million at the time. But similarly, the hacker returned the stolen amount for a 250 ETH white hat bonus, roughly $400,000 back then.
Hacks ranked among the top 10 exchanges robbed
(1) The most significant theft happened at Coincheck, the Japanese exchange, on January 26, 2018, with a loss of $534 million in cryptocurrencies.
(2) Next is Mt Gox, which suffered a $473 million theft in 2014.
(3) FTX is also among the largest hacks in history, losing $415 million in early January this year.
(4) KuCoin appears next, having lost $281 million in 2020.
(5) Gate.io also faced a crypto hack, losing $234 million in 2018.
(6) BitMart was robbed of $200 million in ETH and BNB in 2021.
(7) BitGrail lost $170 million to hackers in 2019, while Maiar DEX suffered a $113 million hack in 2022.
(8) CoinBene faced about a $100 million loss in 2019.
(9) Then there’s Japan’s Liquid exchange, which saw a $90 million theft in 2021.
Saved you a click
I feel for all the victims; no one deserves this. But security often starts with our attitudes, and sometimes our own carelessness is part of the problem.
“In 2023 alone, $1.89 billion was lost in 297 crypto hack attacks.”
We won’t see mass adoption until we tackle this issue. Sorry.
Ten years of scams in crypto and this story seems endless.
This is pretty typical. Every thriving enterprise attracts hackers and scammers. That alone won’t shape the future of crypto.
I wonder how many hackers are browsing this forum, casually looking through these posts and comments.
Wright said:
I wonder how many hackers are browsing this forum, casually looking through these posts and comments.
All of them
These scammers always aim to steal hardworking people’s money. I hope karma hits them hard.
This really needs to be cleaned up at some point.
Shout out to Ethereum, the darkest part of crypto, well done team
It’s crazy that there are multiple hacks worth over $500 million. For perspective, the largest bank robbery ever was $1 billion in Iraq.
People like this are part of why CBDCs are coming.
This article has some mistakes, particularly with Mt. Gox.
The hack causing Mt. Gox’s downfall was in 2011, not in 2014, and it’s the largest hack in history.
February 2014 is when Karpeles reconciled Gox’s hot wallet with his separate air-gapped wallet. He hadn’t done this for almost three years.
During that time, the hacker took coins over a long attack.
I settled my Gox claim last summer, and the details we unraveled during the civil hearings were shocking. Almost like a story.
The saga featured Mark Karpeles against:
- Russian hackers
- Dishonest US Federal Agents
- Japanese Investigators, who interrogated Karpeles for 23 straight days without him breaking.
There have been many significant exploits in the past decade, and that’s an understatement. I hope the space matures, and these issues become a thing of the past.