Crypto Industry Lost $2.8B Due to Hacks in 2022, Highest in Decade
CoinGecko noted that the number of stolen funds is relative to the market cycle, as the stolen funds peaked as the market started to fall.
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Editing by Nathaniel Cajuday
- CoinGecko revealed that the crypto industry has experienced a total loss of $2.77 billion due to the hacking and exploiting incidents that happened in 2022 alone.
- The total loss was the largest recorded in the space since 2013. In 2012, $3.36 billion worth of funds was stolen due to the Silk Road hack alone.
- The crypto aggregator also noted that the number of stolen funds due to hacks and exploits is proportional to the cycle of the market, adding that the stolen funds peaked as the market started to fall.
In a new report from CoinGecko, the independent cryptocurrency aggregator revealed that hacks and exploits in the cryptocurrency space in 2022 total $2.77 billion—the largest amount that was stolen in a single year since 2013.
According to CoinGecko, compared to 2021 the amount exploited in 2022 is 4.2% higher. Last year, the attackers stole only $2.66 billion and it was during the accelerating crypto bull market–2022 is a whole year of a bear market or crypto winter.
“A similar pattern occurred around the first crypto winter in 2018, when hacks and exploits caused $1.13 billion in losses, representing an increase of 256.7% from the previous year,” the data aggregator stated.
Accordingly, CoinGecko noted how the number of stolen funds in each quarter coincided with the cryptocurrency market’s cycles.
During the beginning of the bull market in the second quarter of 2021, the amount of stolen funds jumped by 357.2% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to $0.47 billion; and amid the crypto hype, the amount of losses continued to surge as well.
The losses peaked at $1.26 billion by the start of 2022, which is also when the market started to fall, adding that the amount of stolen funds in the remaining quarters decreased QoQ, with just $0.40 billion exploited in the final quarter last year.
In the report from blockchain data platform Chainalysis last year, it was highlighted that hacking incidents in 2022 rose to 60%, where $1.9 billion worth of funds were stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols from January to July.
Recently, CoinGecko also released its 2022 Annual Crypto Industry Report, which revealed that the total crypto market capitalization lost more than half its value. According to the report, the value of the crypto space last year is about 65% lower than in 2022, as it only closed at $829 billion–the market value in 2021 reached an all-time high of $3 trillion and had a $2.4 trillion market cap.
This article is published on BitPinas: Crypto Industry Lost $2.8B Due to Hacks in 2022, Highest in Decade
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