In the first six months of 2024, hackers have stolen around $1.38 billion (£1.07bn) in crypto—which is twice as much as was taken in the first half of 2023, when roughly $657m (£512m) was pilfered.

TRM Labs’ threat intelligence team uncovered that a handful of larger attacks significantly contributed to the overall sum, with the five top exploits and hacks equating to 70% of the total stolen.

The analysts specifically highlighted that private key and seed phrase compromises—as well as smart contract exploits and flash loan attacks—remain the most prominent attack vectors for those looking to take crypto, with many tokens having recently risen in value.

Speaking to Reuters, Ari Redbord, the global head of policy at TRM Labs, said: “While we have not seen any fundamental changes in the security of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, we have seen a significant increase in the value of various tokens – from bitcoin to ETH (ether) and Solana – compared to the same time last year.”

In terms of instances of larger crypto losses this year, one concerns DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. At the tail end of May, it was revealed that around 4,500 bitcoin—equating to roughly $300 million, or £233m—had been lost in an “unauthorised leak.”

The ins and outs of what happened, exactly, aren’t publicly known. However, TRM Labs’ analysts have suggested that “potential vectors include stolen private keys or address poisoning—a tactic wherein attackers send tiny amounts of cryptocurrency to a victim’s wallet to create fake transaction histories, potentially confusing users into sending funds to the wrong address in future transactions.”

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Another recently-published study, this one from Certik, the blockchain monitoring company, had also found that Web3 cybersecurity cases led to the loss of around $1.1bn in crypto already this year.

The firm’s research revealed that Ethereum was the most targeted blockchain so far in 2024 with 222 incidents, totalling $315m (£246m) in resulting losses.