According to a blog post by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, losses from hacks of cryptocurrencies soared by almost 60 per cent from January to July to C$1.9 billion, compared with C$1.2 billion stolen from hacking in the same period last year.
A steep increase in funds stolen from the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols contributed mainly to this increase. DeFi applications are financial platforms that enable crypto-denominated lending outside traditional banks.
The exploitation of DeFi protocols is unlikely to end any time soon. In the first week of August, attackers hacked cross-chain bridge Nomad in a C$190 million heist. In addition, attackers hacked several Solana wallets and stole C$5 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
Much of the money stolen from the DeFi protocols are linked to North Korean threat actors said to have stolen approximately C$1 billion worth of cryptocurrencies from the DeFi protocols.
Crypto scams recorded a sharp 65 per cent decline through July, in line with the collapse in the price of digital assets. Overall, revenue from fraud in the year to July was C$1.6 billion, down 65 per cent from the same period last year, when it was C$4.46 billion.
Since January 2022, revenues from fraud have fallen in line with the Bitcoin exchange rate. While revenues from fraud have fallen, the total number of individual transfers to fraudsters in 2022 was the lowest in the last four years.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.