This article covers ten major “cryptocurrency hacks in history.” I will be explaining crypto hacks and showing how billions of dollars have been stolen from exchanges and platforms over the years.
These cases don’t only reflect losses but vulnerabilities, inaccuracies, and the need for defence against such notorious heists.
Let’s dive into these tech-advanced financial losses and the ability of cryptocurrency hackers to break into highly guarded systems.
1. Bybit Hack 2025
Took place on 21st February 2025. The Bybit hack is the largest single theft in the history of cryptocurrency. $40,000 ETH, worth $1.5 billion, were stolen in an exchange. It was a “cold wallet” exploitation.
CEO Ben Zhou said in a post on X, “All client funds are safe, and our operations continue as usual without any disruption.” The company further stated that it was adding its security team, along with forensic experts, to investigate the incident.
2. DMM Bitcoin 2024
In May 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, and the National Police Agency of Japan alerted the public about a $308 million cryptocurrency theft, resulting in the loss of 4,502.9 BTC. It was a cookie information exploitation by TraderTraitor as the funds were ultimately transferred to TraderTraitor wallets.
3. Coincheck Hack 2018
In early 2018, approximately 523 million NEM tokens valued at around $534 million were stolen in a crypto exchange hack. It was a hot wallet exploitation due to the compromise of the private key of the wallet. Japanese authorities said most of the individuals involved were high-profile personalities.
4. Wormhole Hack 2022
On February 2, 2022, the Wormhole token bridge suffered an exploit of a hacker minting roughly 120,000 wrapped ETH, subsequently 93,750 ETH worth over $320 million. Wormhole managed the crisis by offering $10 million bounty and security backing from Jump Crypto.
5. Coinbene Hack 2019
Coinbene, a Singapore-based CEX that serves the crypto industry in over 192 countries. On 25 March 2019, CoinBene’s hot wallet entered extended maintenance and saw a series of rapid transactions totaling $105 million. Tokens were moved into Etherdelta, being sold to ETH. And large amount of funds was also moved to cold wallets also converted on decentralized exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, and Bittrex.
6. FTX Post-Collapse Hack 2022
In November 2022, FTX filed for bankruptcy, the very same day it observed unauthorized access in its wallets, causing a theft of approximately $477 million worth of crypto assets. FTX collapsed in 2022, and the reason was the mismanagement of funds. The theft was suspected to occur via execution of the ‘sim-swapping’ method, a digital redirection technique.
7. Ronin Network Hack 2022
Ronin Network, a blockchain built for gaming by Sky Mavis, serves as a ‘sidechain’ to Ethereum. In a blog post on 29th March, Ronnin Network posted that it lost around $615 million in USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar) along with Ethereum, exceeding the $611 million breach of the DeFi platform Poly Network that occurred in August 2021. Attackers controlled 5 of 9 validator nodes, authorizing fake withdrawals.
8. WazirX Hack 2024
India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange platform encountered a colossal cyberbreach on July 18, 2024, with hackers stealing approximately $234-$235 million worth of crypto, evaluating 45% of the platform’s total reserves from a ‘multisig wallet’ even with its sturdy security systems.
This incident was an alarming one and of utmost importance in the crypto industry, especially in India.
9. BNB Chain Bridge Hack 2022
The BNB Chain (formerly known as Binance Smart Chain) got trapped in the biggest crypto scams in the history of cryptocurrency. With a loss of 2 million BNB tokens, worth about $570 million.
An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. “We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC,” Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s CEO, said in a tweet.
10. Beanstalk Farm Governance Hack 2022
In April 2022, The Beanstalk Farm, a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) platform, was tricked by a hacker borrowing a large amount of governance tokens via something called ‘flash loan’. THIS ALLOWED the hacker to buy the majority of the voting power on Beanstalk Farms, and they proposed a fake rule change allowing them to withdraw funds worth $182 million.
This was due to Beanstalk’s allowance of anyone with a majority of votes to instantly pass proposals. This security breach led to an overnight fall in Beanstalk’s reputation and loss of $182 million of reserves.
Has Bitcoin Ever Been Hacked?
Bitcoin itself, ie, the Bitcoin Blockchain and its core protocol, has never been hacked as it is protected with highly secured proof-of-work (PoW) and SHA-256 cryptography.
Though there have been some hacks in the Bitcoin ecosystem where platforms, wallets, and exchanges using Bitcoin have been targeted persistently.
What do These Heists Reveal to You About the Future of Cryptocurrency & Digital Money?
The magnitude and frequency of these cyber attacks clearly make us face the reality of vulnerability, gaps in security, risks, operational management, and internal controls in the digitally evolving finance sector.
The blog also highlights that even the biggest platforms with end-to-end security and protocols can not be trusted with your hard-earned money. The theft can occur in numerous ways, from an insider’s job to an outsider’s sophisticated, well-designed theft project to silly mistakes in security systems to overlooked internal & external polices and rules.
We also need to understand from the above cases that criminals are as advanced as the crypto organizations and, in many cases, even ahead of them, especially in financial crimes involving technology. They’re moving ahead with technology and finance hand in hand.
Cryptocurrency will demand more than just passkeys and wallet codes. It will require intelligence that can mitigate losses, data sets to predict any breaches or theft, real-time transaction monitoring, global coordination, and exceptional policy designs. The advancement must start by identifying its vulnerabilities well.
Related: How Blockchain Locks Data: A Beginner’s Guide
Related: Top 10 Tools To Invest In Bitcoin For Beginners
