Crypto Exploits Decline Dramatically, With Only $76M Stolen By December 2025

December’s losses were spread over 26 incidents, indicating major breaches rather than no attacks at all.

Blockchain security company Peckshield shared that December 2025 closed with a dramatic decrease in crypto exploit losses.

On-chain data shows that figures have dropped by 60% compared to those recorded in November.

$76 Million Lost in 26 Events

According to a Peckshield report published by X, hacking and cyber security exploitation in the crypto sector decreased in December 2025, with only $76.2 million stolen in 26 major incidents. This figure represents a 60% drop from November’s $194.2 million.

One of the biggest hacks during that time was a $50 million address poisoning scam, where attackers impersonated wallet addresses to trick users into withdrawing funds. Another notable incident involved a $27.3M multisig breach in a wallet identified as 0xde5f…e965, which was compromised due to a private key leak.

Other attacks that made it to the top 5 included the buur.sol exploit, which resulted in the loss of $22 million. The Trust Wallet hack, which took place over Christmas, involved a Chrome extension installed on a computer loaded with a vulnerable Web Store API key and GitHub secrets, resulting in the theft of 8.5 million user funds.

Unleash Protocol also lost $3.9 million in December after a hacker gained control of multisig and made unauthorized contract upgrades. Meanwhile, the Flow blockchain experienced a $3.9 million breach caused by a vulnerability in the execution layer that allowed an attacker to create and transfer assets across services before the network was shut down.

Crypto Industry Loses Over $2.2 Billion to Hacks by 2025

Despite the dip in December, on-chain data revealed that 2025 was another challenging year for the digital asset sector, as more than $2.2 billion was lost in the top 10 hacks. The $1.4 billion Bybit breach in February, which saw attackers withdraw nearly 401,000 ETH from the exchange’s wallets, remains the most damaging hack of the year.

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Other major incidents include Cetus, a concentrate-liquidity DEX on Sui, which lost $223 million in May after attackers used a protocol flaw to manipulate prices and withdraw funds.

Balancer V2 also suffered a $128 million exploit in November linked to a bug in its stable pools, while Bitget reported nearly $100 million in losses in April due to manipulation of its VOXEL market-making infrastructure.

Central exchanges were also targeted, with Phemex suffering an $85 million hot wallet breach in January and Iran-based Nobitex the victim of $80-90 million stolen from hot wallets in June. In each case, the platforms cover withdrawals, protect remaining assets, and work to resume services, while the amount recovered from the loss varies.