Cryptocurrency hacks increase by 27% in July: 142 million dollars stolen as the 2025 trend continues

As the market surged in July, cryptocurrency hacks also saw a significant increase compared to the previous month, with losses exceeding 100 million dollars in the last 30 days for cryptocurrency exchanges. This follows a worrying trend that has developed this year, suggesting that the theft of digital asset services could reach a new high by the end of 2025.

Cryptocurrency exchanges lose 114 million dollars in July

On Friday, the security firm PeckShield reported that total losses from cryptocurrency hacks reached 142 million dollars in July, with cryptocurrency exchanges leading the list. Gate, GMX, and BigONE accounted for 80% of the total losses.

It is worth noting that Gate suffered the largest loss of the month after a security breach on July 19 resulted in the transfer of 44 million dollars in USDT from one of the platform's wallets to six unknown personal wallets.

Hackers were able to access the cryptocurrency exchange's system after compromising an employee's login credentials. Recent reports revealed that the employee was allegedly lured into a fake work task and persuaded to download and use their designated laptop from Gate to complete tasks, unknowingly downloading files with malware.

Meanwhile, the perpetual and spot cryptocurrency exchange GMX recorded the second largest hack of the month after losing around 42 million dollars on July 9 when an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the first version of the protocol on Arbitrum.

The GMX V1 vault contract had a vulnerability that allowed the attacker to manipulate the price of the GLP token through the system's calculations, resulting in the transfer of approximately 42 million dollars in assets from the GLP pool to an unknown wallet.

However, the incident had a happy ending after the hacker accepted a white hat reward and returned most of the funds. Reportedly, the exploiter returned 10.49 million dollars in FRAX and 10,000 ETH, valued at 30 million dollars, on July 11.

The alarming trend of 2025 continues

Based on data from previous reports by PeckShield, the second quarter showed a declining trend in total cryptocurrency losses, with May and June recording month-over-month decreases of 40% and 56%, respectively.

However, the short-term trend changed in July, as the total value of stolen funds increased by 27.2% from the 111.6 million dollars in June. Furthermore, the total number of major incidents slightly increased by 13.3%, rising from 15 incidents recorded in June to 17 hacks in July.

This follows a broader trend that is developing this year, as Chainalysis explained in its “Mid-Year Update on Cryptocurrency Crimes 2025”. In the report, the on-chain analysis firm revealed that cryptocurrency theft this year has been “more devastating” than the entirety of 2024, with over 2.7 billion dollars in funds stolen from cryptocurrency services in the first half.

By the end of June, more accumulated value had been stolen so far this year (YTD) than during the same period in 2022, suggesting that crypto service theft could potentially increase another 60% by the end of the year.

Additionally, the YTD activity shows a more pronounced trajectory towards the end of the first half, with alarming speed and consistency, than in previous years. For reference, 2025 required 142 days to reach the mark of 2 billion dollars in stolen value from platforms, while 2022 reached this volume in 214 days.

“If this trend continues, we could see 2025 ending with more than 4.3 billion dollars stolen just from services,” the report forecasted.

Disclaimer: For informational purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.