Crypto losses hit $67M in February, down 50% from January

Crypto industry losses in February 2024 amounted to $67 million across 12 incidents, with hacking incidents accounting for 97.54% of the stolen funds, according to a report by Immunefi, a bug bounty and security services platform for the DeFi sector. The remaining 2.46% were due to fraud. This marks a significant reduction from January’s losses, suggesting potential improvements in security or increased vigilance in the crypto community. The majority of February’s losses were from two major incidents involving PlayDapp and FixedFloat, with Ethereum being the most targeted blockchain.

The report highlights that the losses in February were notably less than the $133 million lost in January, indicating a possible positive shift in security measures or community awareness. Despite this, the combined losses for the first two months of the year stand at $200 million, which is 15.4% higher than the same period in the previous year. Notably, the report did not include several significant attacks, such as the $112 million attack on Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s personal wallet. If these were counted, the total losses for February would be $198.1 million, and the year-to-date figure would reach $398.1 million.

In a separate report by De.Fi, a Web3 app and antivirus solution, it was noted that the DeFi sector experienced over $82 million in losses in February, with only a small fraction recovered. The largest exploit was a security breach in the Ethereum-based Play-to-Earn game PlayDapp, which resulted in a loss of $32.3 million due to compromised private keys and unauthorized minting of tokens. Access control issues were the dominant cause of losses, emphasizing the need for comprehensive security audits and robust access management practices.

Despite the setbacks, the DeFi market showed positive trends, with the top 100 DeFi tokens gaining momentum and the total value locked in DeFi protocols surpassing $95 billion. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce also advocated for more decentralization in the financial system at ETHDenver. Meanwhile, the Seneca stablecoin hacker returned stolen funds after a $6.4 million exploit, and the Shido token saw a 94% drop after its Ethereum staking contract was drained.