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- Over $2.2 billion lost to crypto hacks and scams in just six months of 2025.
- Physical attacks including kidnappings and ransom demands are on the rise in the crypto space.
- Ethereum leads in number of incidents, with $1.6 billion in damages from 175 attacks.
The cryptocurrency industry has been rocked by a wave of cyber and physical attacks in 2025, with reported losses exceeding $2.2 billion in just six months. This compares to a mind-blowing rise in 2024, as per CertiK H1 2025 Hack3d Web3 Security Report.
In the first six months of 2023, CertiK registered 344 on-chain attacks against wallets, protocols, and end users on the leading blockchains. The losses caused by wallet breaches alone were $1.7 billion, distributed in only 34 cases. Phishing scams became an epidemic as well, with damages amounting to $410 million due to 132 incidents.
Among the most harmful incidents was one in February when an exchange platform, Bybit, lost $1.5 billion in a wallet breach connected to staked Ethereum. In May, a brilliant contract exploit cost the Cetus Protocol $225 million. Out of this, Sui validators managed to recover $162 million.
Ethereum became the most targeted. The network experienced 175 incidents, which resulted in losses of $1.6 billion. A stunning increase in smart contract-related risks was observed, and damage spiked up to a level of $229 million in May, compared to only $5 million in April.
Rise in Violence and Poor Key Management Deepen Crisis
In addition to digital breaches, there has been an increase in physical attacks. CertiK recorded 32 cases of violence, including kidnappings and ransom. France, which registered the most such cases, included one, which resulted in an attempted kidnapping targeted at the family of the CEO of Paymium.
The second persistent vulnerability is ineffective management of private keys. Most of them dealt with keys that were not encrypted or handled by a single person. The failure has been a single means of facilitating high-value thefts.
Though there were certain victories in hack recovery, about 187 million dollars was recovered by various measures in whitehat activities and cooperation between exchanges, the trend in increased complexity and violence of attacks presents a sobering view of the crypto industry. An increasing trend reveals acute loopholes in security protocols, which have gone lacking.
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