[Amsterdam] Crystal Blockchain releases its latest crypto hacks, frauds, and scams findings for 2022, reporting that 231 attacks on Decentralized Finance protocols, 135 security attacks, and 95 fraudulent schemes have taken place since 2011, resulting in the theft of approximately USD $16.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets in that time.
In their latest Crypto & DeFi Hacks & Scams Report, the Crystal Blockchain Intelligence team states that $4,17bn worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in 199 incidents in 2022, and to date, $119 m has been stolen in 19 incidents in 2023.
The most predominant types of attacks until 2021 were CEX security breaches, when the trend moved towards DEX and DeFi breaches. In 2022, the ratio of CEX versus DEX hacks was as high as 1:13. To date the largest hack happened in late March 2022, when Ronin Network, an Ethereum sidechain built for the play-to-earn NFT game Axie Infinity, was hacked for over 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USD Coin for a combined value of over USD $600 million. Most of the funds moved to the Tornado Cash mixing service.
The US takes first place for the highest number of reported incidents against its entities, having been targeted by bad actors 14 times. In terms of value, China is on top by a wide margin, mostly because of the PlusToken Ponzi scheme (2019) which defrauded investors out of USD $2.25 billion, and the WoToken scam (2020) which saw investors lose more than USD $1 billion.
Nearly 40% of all stolen funds were distributed via fraudulent exchanges since 2011 – that is, exchanges defined as having been involved in exit scams, illegal behavior, or having their funds seized by the government. In most fraud cases, the culprits tried to withdraw the stolen funds from exchanges with weak KYC controls - where only an email and phone number for customer interaction is required. 67.92% of funds were then moved to exchanges that could provide services without additional questions.
Crystal is an Amsterdam-headquartered blockchain analytics company that builds solutions to streamline crypto compliance operations and aid investigations into financial crime. Crystal works globally with customers in the digital asset industry, banking and regulatory sectors. Crystal’s all-in-one blockchain analytics tool provides blockchain analytics and compliance tools to streamline Know Your Transaction (KYT) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes to detect financial crime and streamline operations.
