- North Korean hackers stole $2.02 billion in crypto during 2025, marking a 51% increase from 2024.
- Over $3.4 billion was stolen in total across the crypto ecosystem, with personal wallets and centralized platforms facing rising threats.
- DeFi hacks remained relatively low despite increased total value locked, showing improved security measures.
The crypto industry faced a challenging year in 2025, with cybercrime reaching unprecedented levels. According to Chainalysis’ first preview of its 2026 Crypto Crime Report, North Korean hackers emerged as the dominant threat, stealing $2.02 billion in digital assets, a 51% jump from the previous year. This takes their total estimated haul to $6.75 billion since tracking began.
The country achieved such results with a lower number of confirmed attacks using high-impact operations. The type of attacks involved were often aimed at centralized exchanges, custodians, and Web3 companies focusing on AI.
The methods involved hiring IT professionals in the targeted companies and using deceptive recruitment campaigns to extract user login names and passwords.
The February Bybit hack resulted in the theft of $1.5 billion, proving the impact one major event can have on increasing the annual figures substantially.
During 2025 alone, more than $3.4 billion worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen, with the top three hacks accounting for 69% of the overall figures. This indicates that despite smaller numbers being recorded in most thefts, major ones are now responsible for the annual figures.
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Rising Risks for Individual Crypto Users
There were also increasing risks faced by individual users, even as state-sponsored hackers like North Korea staged large-scale thefts. Personal wallet hacks accounted for 20% of the total in 2025, with a minimum of 80,000 victims, which was double the number from 2022.
Solana had approximately 26,500 victims on its own. The average amount stolen per wallet reduced from $1.5 billion in 2024 to $713 million in 2025, which clearly showed that the hackers were targeting more people, yet with lesser amounts.
Breaches of the private key are not common, but when they happen, they result in massive losses of 88% of Q1 2025 thefts. According to analysts, hackers mostly target the vulnerabilities the institution may have in the way it operates.
DeFi Shows Resilience Amid Shifts in Crime Patterns
DeFi told a different tale. Although the TVL started to recover, the hack losses remained relatively low.
A possible $13 million theft on the Venus Protocol in September reflected an improved level of security because the potential loss was prevented by prompt scanning and swift actions taken by the platform to lock the aggressor’s funds and resume full functionality within 12 hours.
According to experts, the nature of crypto crimes is evolving with the increasing security in DeFi. The hackers are now targeting both individual and centralized exchanges.
The financial system used by North Korea has highly advanced money laundering techniques, with on-chain, crossed-chain, and Chinese language services that are not transparent, indicating how sophisticated this is. The biggest issue in 2026 is preventing major attacks before even having a Bybit-level incident.
Also Read: U.S. Justice Department Seizes Crypto Scam Domain Linked to Southeast Asia
