Since 2011, $7.7 billion have been stolen by the hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges
According to Crystal Blockchain, since 2011, criminals have been able to steal about $7.7 billion in cryptovolves. In total there were 113 hackings of crypt currency exchanges and 23 large fraud schemes were implemented.
Specialists from Crystal Blockchain – the analytical division of Bitfury – analyzed the largest attacks in the period from 2011 to 2020, including hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges, fraudulent schemes and pyramids. According to the report, in almost ten years, the criminals earned $2.88 billion from hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges and $4.8 billion from fraudulent schemes.
The largest crypt-currency pyramid was the PlusToken scheme closed in 2019, which collected about $2.9 billion in BTC, ETH and EOS. The largest hacking stock exchange remains the incident with the Japanese site Coincheck in 2018, when hackers stole NEM worth about $ 535 million. Income of criminals from hacking cryptocurrency exchanges and fraud schemes from 2011 to 2020 and the number of reported incidents per year. Source: Crystal Blockchain.
The U.S. ranks first in the industry in terms of number of incidents. Since 2011, cryptographic companies in the U.S. have fallen victim to attackers 13 times. However, China leads in the amount of stolen cryptographic assets, which is mainly due to the cryptographic pyramids PlusToken and WoToken. Also many hackings of crypt-currency exchanges and frauds took place in the UK, South Korea, Japan and China.
In 75% of cases, the attackers tried to withdraw stolen crypto assets through the stock exchanges with low level of verification. According to Crystal Blockchain, about 43% of all stolen funds were laundered through questionable exchanges, such as BTC-e. At the same time, only 3% of the stolen crypto assets were withdrawn through mixers, while about 1% were withdrawn through the darknet markets.
In conclusion, analysts note that over the past few years, the number of cyber attacks on cryptocurrency projects remains relatively high. Most often, large cryptovoltaic exchanges are hacked. Experts believe that, given the further growth of the industry, the number of crimes in the sector will grow.
According to analysts, crypt-currency exchanges should create special funds to insure users’ money, have their own security service, software for block analysts, as well as reserves equivalent to the number of cryptovolves stored in online storage. These mechanisms will prevent losses of users in case of hacking.
