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$1.38B worth of cryptocurrency was lost to hackers and network exploits in H1 2024, over a twofold rise from the corresponding period last year, blockchain research firm TRM Labs said on Friday.
However, the amount plundered this year still stands over a third below the first six months of 2022, when nearly $2B was stolen, marking a record year for crypto hacks.
Similar to last year, a few large hacks contributed to most of the stolen funds. The top five hacks and exploits made up 70% of the YTD haul, while the median hack was 150% bigger than in 2023.
With more than 4,500 bitcoins (BTC-USD) worth over $300M stolen, the attack on the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin remains the largest crypto hack this year, according to TRM’s data as of June 24.
The firm attributed the surge in theft activity to the rise in average crypto prices over the past six months.
Despite a brief selloff this week, major cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC-USD), Ethereum (ETH-USD), Solana (SOL-USD), Dogecoin (DOGE-USD), and staked ether (SETH-USD) have all returned more than 20% YTD, well outperforming the S&P 500 (SP500).
“To date, TRM has observed no fundamental changes in the security of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that may explain this upward trend, nor have we found significant differences in attack vectors or in the number of attacks between the first halves of 2023 and 2024,” TRM said.