Cryptocurrency hacks increased by 15% in August with $163 million stolen in 16 incidents

Cryptopolitan

1 Sept 2025 11:30

The latest analysis from the blockchain security company PeckShield shows that hacks and exploits of cryptocurrencies in August increased by 15% compared to July. The security firm reported that over $163 million in digital assets were stolen in 16 incidents.

According to PeckShield, the major cryptocurrency hacks in August included the Turkish exchange BtcTurk, the token launch platform ODIN.fun, the lending protocol BetterBank, and CrediX Finance.

BtcTurk suffers two hacks in 14 months

On August 14, the cybersecurity company Cyvers detected unusual activity with Ether and other tokens across several blockchain networks. Around 1:20 PM BST, Cyvers' monitoring systems flagged large transactions on Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Mantle, and Polygon.

🚨ALERT🚨 $48M has been detected in digital assets in suspicious activity across multiple chains involving a Turkish exchange.

About 30 minutes ago, our system detected multiple alerts on the $ETH, $AVAX, $ARB, $BASE, $OP, $MANTLE and $MATIC networks. Most of the funds were… pic.twitter.com/ss4a7O2hUd

— 🚨 Cyvers Alerts 🚨 (@CyversAlerts) August 14, 2025

“Our system detected multiple alerts on the ETH, AVAX, ARB, BASE, OP, MANTLE, and MATIC networks,” the company reported. Investigators said the attacker moved the stolen assets to two addresses and began the laundering process by exchanging them.

Almost 20 minutes later, BtcTurk suspended deposits and withdrawals citing a “technical issue” affecting its hot wallets. The exchange assured customers that local currency transfers and trading were not affected, but did not confirm the full scale of losses.

The hack resulted in the theft of digital assets, including $48 million in Ether, according to estimates from Cyvers.

In another incident of the month, dated August 19, a Bitcoin holder lost 783 BTC, approximately $91 million, in a social engineering attack. This coincidentally coincided with the anniversary of the hack of $240 million to Genesis Creditor.

Blockchain security researcher ZachXBT said that the attacker tricked the BTC investor into believing he was tech support for a hardware wallet provider, which led the victim to reveal private credentials.

The stolen Bitcoins were funneled through Wasabi Wallet, a privacy tool similar to Tornado Cash, used to hide the origin of illicit assets.

DeFi Exploitations with the Attack on BetterBank

During the past weekend, hackers drained around $5 million from the decentralized lending protocol BetterBank based on PulseChain through a complex liquidity manipulation and reward issuance attack. The perpetrators manipulated BetterBank's ESTEEM reward system, which issued tokens when users provided liquidity for FAVOR.

According to the Web3 security firm QuillAudits, the attackers created a fake ERC20 token paired with PDAIF, then manipulated operations through wash trading. Inflating ESTEEM rewards helped them convert the artificial supply into real assets, inadvertently destabilizing the pool.

“The attacker laundered the stolen funds through exchanges on PulseChain DEXes and subsequently transferred about $922K in ETH to Ethereum, hiding their trail through Tornado Cash,” noted QuillAudits.

Odin.fun suffers from liquidity manipulation of $7 million

In another attack, hackers targeted Odin.fun, a memecoin launch platform, draining 58.2 BTC, approximately $7 million, in less than two hours. Blockchain data from PeckShield shows that the platform's reserves fell from 291 BTC to 232.8 BTC during the incident.

The exploit involved manipulating the liquidity pool where the attackers paired Bitcoin with a worthless token, SATOSHI. After exploiting the scarce liquidity of the pool and inflating the value of the token through wash trading, they withdrew large amounts of real BTC at a false price ratio.

Odin.fun co-founder, Bob Bodily, revealed that the platform had suffered an attack and admitted that its treasury was not large enough to absorb the losses. He stated that the team was working on a “concrete plan” to compensate affected users and had initiated a full audit with a security firm. “We have ideas… we will share details as soon as they are finalized,” Bodily posted on X.

A Chainalysis report from July mentioned that the numerous cryptocurrency hacks in 2025 could be linked to the increase in the price of Bitcoin.

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