- Total crypto thefts hit about $2.72 billion in 2025.
- The largest single exploit was the February attack on Bybit, at about $1.5 billion.
- Major centralized exchanges and DeFi platforms, including Coinbase, Cetus Protocol, Nobitex, UPCX, BtcTurk, and Upbit, reported significant losses.
The crypto sector recorded roughly $2.72 billion in stolen funds in 2025. The year began with a February exploit of Bybit that cost about $1.5 billion. Security firm reports and investigators pointed to highly organized actors and expanded North Korean involvement as key factors.
Bybit lost about $1.4–$1.5 billion in Ethereum and related tokens after attackers accessed assets held in multi-signature wallets. Multi-signature wallets are accounts that require multiple approvals to move funds. A compromised developer laptop was later linked to the incident.
In May, Coinbase disclosed a data breach that could cost up to $400 million to remediate. The company said no customer funds, passwords, or private keys were taken, but overseas subcontractors were bribed for sensitive data. Criminals demanded $20 million in Bitcoin in exchange for the stolen details; Coinbase offered the same bounty to help catch them.
Decentralized finance suffered major losses when Cetus Protocol lost about $223 million after attackers used spoof tokens to distort price calculations and drain liquidity pools. Spoof tokens are fake tokens used to mislead systems. Liquidity pools are token reserves that enable decentralized trading. Cetus later recovered about $162 million and resumed operations 17 days after the exploit.
Other notable incidents included a June attack that drained about $90 million from Iran’s Nobitex, a $70 million theft from open-source protocol UPCX in April via a compromised private key, and a roughly $48–$50 million breach at Turkey’s BtcTurk in August; the exchange said it had suspended withdrawals. In November, South Korea’s Upbit reported about $36 million taken from a Solana hot wallet. Hot wallets are connected to the internet; cold wallets are not.
Security researchers warned that attacks in 2025 were faster and more coordinated. “Attacks are faster, better coordinated, and far easier to scale than they were in previous cycles,” and “In 2025, we also saw the continued expansion of North Korea‘s IT worker schemes, which further added to the operational sophistication behind many campaigns.”
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