Losses Due to Crypto Exploits Saw 93 Percent Drop YoY in January, Blockchain Security Firm Says

A total of 24 crypto exploits were recorded by a blockchain security firm last month.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 1 February 2023 15:00 IST

Losses Due to Crypto Exploits Saw 93 Percent Drop YoY in January, Blockchain Security Firm Says

Photo Credit: Pexels/ David Mcbee

January’s crypto exploits let to the loss of $8.8 million in funds

Highlights

LendHub recorded the biggest loss due to an exploit in January worth $6 m
Thereum Finance, Midas Capital also suffered big exploits last month
The top ten crypto hacks axed away $2.1 billion in lost funds in 2022

The month of January seemingly witnessed the revival of the crypto sector that witnessed a spectacular meltdown in the second half of last year. Not only have majority crypto assets risen in their respective values last month, but losses incurred dur to crypto exploits have also reportedly dropped by 93 percent in January, as compared to the same month last year. A report by a blockchain security firm notes that stolen crypto funds are still being routed into destination wallets via crypto mixers like Tornado Cash, despite the increased scrutiny on these services.

A total of 24 crypto exploits were recorded by blockchain security firm PeckShield last month. Collectively, these exploits amounted to $8.8 million (roughly Rs. 72 crore). In January 2022, the company had estimated the value of crypto funds lost in exploits to be around $120 million (roughly Rs. 980 crore).

In its findings, PeckShield claimed that last month's biggest exploit was suffered by LendHub. The DeFi lending and borrowing platform lost $6 million (roughly Rs. 50 crore) during the exploit, accounting for 68 percent of the total funds lost.

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Thereum Finance and Midas Capital also suffered hack attacks, losing $580,000 (roughly Rs. 5 crore) and $650,000 (roughly Rs. 5.5 crore) this January, making for notable incidences, according to a CoinTelegraph report.

Despite these incidents, the amount of funds lost due to crypto exploits last month was 68 percent lower than in December.

Out of all the funds that were stolen, $2.6 million (roughly Rs. 21 crore) worth of crypto assets were sent to crypto mixers. These include Binance Coin and Ether.

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#PeckShieldAlert ~24 exploits grabbed $8.8M in January 2023.
As of January 31st, 2023, ~$2.6M worth of stolen funds (~2,668 $BNB & 1,200 $ETH) were transferred into Mixers (TornadoCash, Fixedfloat, and sideshift[.]ai). pic.twitter.com/KlGmDmKFbI
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 31, 2023

Back in 2022, the top ten hack attacks that impacted the crypto sector led to the loss of over $2 billion (roughly Rs. 17,181 crore).

Industry experts have regularly predicted that as and when more nations introduce laws to govern the crypto space, the number of hack attacks hitting the industry are likely to go down.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Crypto Hacks, Crypto Attacks

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More