Cryptocurrency losses due to hacks and scams skyrocketed in the second quarter of 2024, reaching a staggering $572 million according to a new report by blockchain security platform Immunefi. This represents a more than 113% increase compared to the same period in 2023.
While losses had been steadily declining, with a 23% drop in Q1 2024, a dramatic surge occurred in late May and June. Centralized exchanges, the platforms where users can trade cryptocurrencies, were the primary target, suffering an estimated $401 million in losses – a staggering 70% of the total.
The biggest blow came from the May 31st hack of DMM, a crypto exchange, where attackers made off with a whopping $305 million in Bitcoin. Another significant attack targeted BtcTurk on June 22nd, resulting in losses of $55 million. Together, these two incidents accounted for over 60% of all losses in Q2.
Despite the surge in centralized exchange attacks, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols actually saw a 25% decrease in losses compared to Q2 2023, totaling $171 million. Ethereum and the BNB Smart Chain remained the most popular targets for attackers, representing 71% of the total losses.
However, the report also highlighted a potential rise in attacks targeting Ethereum layer 2 scaling solutions like Arbitrum, which suffered four successful exploits and accounted for 5.5% of all losses.
