Criminals are on track to steal over $3 billion in cryptocurrencies this year, according to Chainalysis’ top cybercrime researcher.
The crypto analytics firm’s analyst made the prediction as bad actors have almost doubled the amount stolen to $1.6 billion in 2024 so far, up from $857 million stolen between January and July in 2023, according to a new report from Chainalysis released on Thursday.
“If you just just do a straight line out from where we’re at, you’re on track for somewhere in the $2 to $ 3 billion-plus range in terms of total number of dollars stolen this year,” Eric Jardine, the cybercrimes research lead at Chainalysis, told DL News.
He qualified that his prediction was not necessarily representative of formal forecasts from Chainalysis and that it’s subject to price changes, big hacks, and other unforeseen events.
Hackers stole some $1.7 billion in 2023.
Surprisingly, Jardine said that total illicit activity across the crypto industry has fallen almost 20% this year compared to last.
Illicit activity not only comprises stolen funds but also other illegal activities, including crypto sent or received for terrorism financing.
The Chainalysis report comes less than a month after one of the largest hacks of the year.
In July, WazirX saw hackers drain $235 million from its coffers, almost half of the Indian crypto exchange’s total assets.
WazirX is still dealing with the fallout of the heist. The exchange recently decided to take out funds it had kept with a crypto custodian it blames for the exploit.
‘Back to the future’
Chainalysis was quick to clarify that much of the rise in the dollar value of crypto funds stolen stems from a rise in prices.
The total value of all cryptocurrencies has almost doubled from August 2023 to now about $2.17 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
Chainalysis has also observed changes in hackers’ strategies. They are “going back to the future” and targeting more centralised exchanges than DeFi protocols, it wrote.
“Crypto thieves seem to be returning to their roots and targeting centralised exchanges again after four years focused on their decentralised counterparts,” wrote Chainalysis.
Crypto market movers
Bitcoin is down 4.1% over the past $58,722 hours to trade at $TK.
Ethereum is down 3.9% to trade at $2,641.
What we are reading
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Ben Weiss is a Dubai Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.
