Report: Crypto scams and hacks will cost more than $4 billion by 2025

Scam losses have increased 64% year over year, thanks to tailored phishing and impersonation campaigns targeting high-value victims.

Crypto-related scams and hacks will have taken more than $4.04 billion from users and platforms in 2025, according to data shared by blockchain security firm PeckShield.

The numbers indicate a clear shift towards targeted social engineering and attacks on centralized players, with scams alone growing much faster than technical exploits.

Scams and centralized attacks caused losses in 2025

PeckShield said total crypto losses by 2025 rose approximately 34% as of 2024, with $2.67 billion related to hacks and $1.37 billion related to scams.

Fraud losses increased approximately 64% year-over-year, outpacing the growth of direct protocol exploits. The bigger problem, however, was higher losses per case, often linked to tailored phishing and impersonation campaigns targeting high-value individuals.

More than 200 hacking incidents were registered during the year, not including fraud. February was responsible for the largest single-month loss ever following a $1.51 billion breach at Bybit, which PeckShield now considers the largest hack in crypto history. The FBI later linked that attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, detailing how they used malware and social engineering to gain access to Bybit’s cold wallets.

According to PeckShield data, attackers also began changing their approach last year. Instead of just focusing on decentralized financial systems (DeFi), they started focusing more on centralized exchanges and large organizations, which made up 75% of stolen funds last year, up from 46% in 2024.

BNB Chain saw the highest number of incidents, while Ethereum was responsible for the most dollar value lost due to large targets.

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A look at patterns and recovery

The report also provided context on how the stolen money was moved. Tracked money laundering associated with major exploits reached $1.49 billion in 2025, up 15% from the previous year, with PeckShield linking the increase to the larger amounts taken in individual heists.

On the plus side, approximately $334.9 million in stolen cryptocurrency was recovered or frozen by authorities and security companies last year. However, that recovery rate was lower than the $488.5 million recovered in 2024, indicating that the scale and complexity of the thefts is outpacing mitigation efforts.

Recent data offers a mixed outlook. A separate report from PeckShield on January 3, 2026 noted that losses from exploits fell to $76 million in December 2025, a 60% drop from November. However, the new year started with a major breach, as the Truebit protocol lost $26.5 million due to an exploit on January 9.

This ongoing cycle of attacks is a reminder that while monthly totals may fluctuate, the underlying threats of infrastructure vulnerabilities and personalized scams remain persistent challenges to the crypto ecosystem.

Together, the cases support PeckShield’s view that 2025 losses had less to do with random exploits and more to do with precision targeting, with social engineering and access to centralized systems playing an increasingly important role.