Crypto hacks surge in Q1 2025: $1.63B stolen, up 131% YoY

The opening quarter of 2025 has seen an increase in cryptocurrency attacks when hackers walked away with $1.63 billion across over 60 incidents.

This is a 131% growth from the $706 million lost in Q1 2024 according to statistics provided by PeckShieldAlert.

March 2025 concluded the quarter with 20 reported crypto hacks that resulted in $33.46 million in losses. One of the more positive developments during the month was the recovery of 90% of funds from a $5 million hack affecting the 1inch protocol.

Abracadabra lost the highest in March

March 2025 was marked by ongoing targeted attacks against cryptocurrency platforms and protocols. According to the figures, Abracadabra.money endured the biggest loss of $13 million. It alone contributed close to 39% of the total crypto theft in the month.

The second largest was the hack that hit the Zoth protocol, with hackers stealing $8.32 million. The 1inch protocol had a $5 million hack. Security teams, however, recovered 90% of these funds. Hyperliquid and WeKey completed the top five victims and lost $4 million and $700,000 respectively.

Statistics from CertiK Alert give more insight into the March events, which indicate that nearly $28.8 million was lost through exploits, hacks, and scams. The analytics firm further reported that about $4.5 million of the monthly total losses originated from phishing attacks.

PeckShield monitored various fund flows such as 193 ETH, 1,014.5 BTC, 368 SOL, 205.8 XRP, and 381.05 BNB transferred by attackers across various cryptocurrency networks. CertiK’s report leaves out a $32 million reported theft from a Coinbase user. This event has been monitored separately from protocol-level exploits.

#PeckShieldAlert Q1 2025 witnessed 60+ crypto hacks, resulting in total losses of $1.63B, a YoY increase of 131% compared to $706M in Q1 2024.

March 2025 recorded 20 crypto hacks, resulting in $33.46M in losses, including a $5M hack affecting #1inch, which was 90% recovered.… pic.twitter.com/Pg3fHpUvUp

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) April 1, 2025

Q1 2025 lost $1.63 billion in total

The first quarter of 2025 recorded total losses of $1.63 billion. This total has exceeded full-year losses in numerous past years. The 131% year-over-year increase from Q1 2024’s $706 million indicates attackers are discovering fresh methods to take advantage despite advances in industry security.

January 2025 started the quarter off with $87.93 million in losses in several incidents. February experienced a huge increase to $1.51 billion. This was the most expensive month of the quarter by far. March improved somewhat with $33.46 million in losses. The number of successful attacks was still high at 20 individual incidents.

A breakdown of attack types indicates that code vulnerabilities were the major point of entry for attackers. Code vulnerabilities were responsible for $14.47 million in losses in March alone, based on CertiK data. Wallet compromise came in second at $8.85 million. This was followed by access control issues at $6.47 million and phishing attacks at $4.54 million.

#CertiKStatsAlert 🚨

Combining all the incidents in March we’ve confirmed ~$28.8M lost to exploits, hacks and scams after ~$4.8m was returned in the 1inch Resolver incident.

~$4.5M of the total is attributed to phishing.

Figures exclude the reported ~$32m theft from a… pic.twitter.com/Q2BHujUJpk

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) March 31, 2025

DeFi protocols suffered the most from the attacks, with $27.07 million lost in March. NFT projects lost $7.12 million, and bridge attacks lost $278,452. Meme coins and deflationary tokens lost smaller but significant amounts of $210,150 and $138,189 respectively.

Recovery efforts see mixed results

Among the top events reported by CertiK during March, MM protocol was exploited the most for $12.9 million. This was closely followed by Zoth ($8.45 million), TrueHarvester ($5.3 million), WebyDo ($737,321), and SA-Trading ($328,512).

Recovery efforts have been mixed. The best news was that from the 1inch Resolver hack. This was where the security teams were able to recover around 90% of the $5 million that had been stolen. Phishing attacks have been prevalent during March, which has seen an increase in these social engineering schemes. According to data from CertiK, phishing attacks have cost $4.5 million in losses in the month of March alone.

Flash loan attacks witnessed fluctuations during the quarter, with a rise in February followed by a fall in March. The amount recovered from victims totaled little in March compared to overall losses. According to the information, only $4.8 million was recovered from the $33.7 million stolen approximately. This equates to about a 14% recovery rate.

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