Billions stolen
Crypto Exchange Hacks Timeline
Since the advent of bitcoin 10 years ago, the story of cryptocurrencies has been riddled with frequent, spectacular, and troubling hacks to even the most reputable cryptocurrency exchange platforms.
As of today, there are a total of 58 hacking events, with lost funds amounting to a total of approximately $2.1 billion at the time of these hacks, with the Mt.Gox hack of 2014 being the biggest casualty yet with $661,348,000 of stolen funds. The total amount does not include stolen user data and undisclosed amounts of stolen funds.
If you don't actively trade, make sure to secure your funds using a hardware wallet.
Note: Etherbit.in is an an Indian security gadget store, operating since 2017. Etherbit.in does not buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies and does not provide financial advice on cryptocurrencies, providers, or services.
WazirX lost $230,000,000
July 18, 2024 — The Hindu
WazirX is dealing with a hacked wallet, panicked customers, substantially reduced holdings, and frozen assets.
Customers are waiting for compensation as well as clarity from the crypto exchange that claimed to be India’s largest by volume.
FTX lost $8,000,000,000
November 11, 2022 — ABC News
FTX, a leading crypto exchange, collapsed in November 2022 after a run on customer withdrawals revealed an $8 billion hole, leading to bankruptcy.
Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to 25 years for fraud.
Deribit lost $28,000,000
November 1, 2022 — Cointelegraph
Major cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit has halted withdrawals after suffering a $28 million hot wallet hack.
Deribit exchange got its hot wallet compromised before midnight UTC on Nov. 1, the firm reported on Twitter.
LCX lost $6,800,000
January 9, 2022 — Cointelegraph
Liechtenstein-based crypto exchange LCX has confirmed the compromise of one of its hot wallets after temporarily suspending all deposits and withdrawals on the platform.
Based on PeckShield's investigation, LCX lost a cumulative of $6.8 million after the hacker successfully transferred eight types of tokens
AscendEX lost $78,000,000
December 11, 2021 — The Block
Crypto exchange AscendEX — formerly known as BitMax — has been hacked for an estimated $77.7 million. That's according to the exchange, which acknowledged the hack, and security researchers PeckShield who have estimated its losses.
BitMart lost $150,000,000
December 5, 2021 — The Block
Crypto exchange BitMart said late Saturday that it has suffered a hack, resulting in the loss of $150 million worth of crypto.
Liquid lost $80,000,000
August 19, 2021 — Cointelegraph
Japanese exchange Liquid has been hacked with about $80 million in digital assets moved off the platform.
The exchange confirmed the security breach in an August 19 tweet, with Liquid revealing the wallet addresses implicated in the breach. The exchange noted that only it’s warm wallets were affected, adding that its assets are currently being moved into cold storage.
Hotbit faced a cyber-attack
April 29, 2021 — Bitcoin.com
A cryptocurrency exchange with about 2 million users worldwide announced that it has suffered a serious cyber attack. A number of basic services are paralyzed and the attacker tried to access the exchange's wallets.
Cryptopia lost $45,000
February 1, 2021 — Bitcoin.com
Controversy still surrounds a liquidated New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange, which allegedly got hacked again. Adding to the $30 million stolen in 2019, Cryptopia reports that it was the target of another theft incident on February 1, 2021.
Livecoin faced a cyber-attack
December 23, 2020 — ZDNet
Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin posted on message on its official website on Christmas Eve claiming it was hacked and lost control of some of its servers, warning customers to stop using its services.
KuCoin lost $280,000,000
September 26, 2020 — CoinDesk
In a live stream on 4:30 UTC Saturday, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu said one or more hackers obtained the private keys to the exchange's hot wallets. KuCoin transferred what was left in them to new hot wallets, abandoned the old ones and froze customer deposits and withdrawals, Lyu said.
Eterbase lost $5,400,000
September 8, 2020 — Security Boulevard
Eterbase Exchange, a popular Slovakian cryptocurrency exchange platform was hacked by threat actors, on September 8, 2020.
Reportedly, $5.4 Million worth of funds were stolen and transferred by hackers from the platform, taking the security industry by storm.
BuyUcoin faced user data leak
Mid 2020 — Bitcoin.com
Buyucoin, a Delhi NCR-based cryptocurrency exchange, has reportedly been hacked. The exchange has more than 350K registered users and has facilitated over $500 million in cryptocurrency trades, according to its website.
Several local news outlets reported that sensitive data of about 325K customers has been dumped onto the dark web.
Altsbit lost $73,000
February 6, 2020 — Twitter @Altsbit
The exchange was hacked during the night and almost all funds from BTC, ETH, ARRR and VRSC were stolen.
Upbit lost $49,000,000
November 27, 2019 — Upbit
At approximately 13:06 on November 27th, 2019 (KST), 342,000 ETH was sent from Upbit's Ethereum hot wallet to an anonymous wallet address.
BITPoint lost $32,000,000
July 12, 2019 — CCN
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint was hacked last week when hackers stole 3.5 billion yen ($32 million) from the exchange's hot wallet, of which 2.5 billion yen were customer funds.
Bitrue lost $4,200,000
June 27, 2019 — CoinDesk
Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue has been hacked for around $4.2 million in user assets.
Binance lost $40,000,000
May 7, 2019 — Bloomberg
Hackers withdrew 7,000 Bitcoins worth about $40 million via a single transaction in a large scale security breach. The hackers used a variety of techniques including phishing and viruses to obtain a large amount of user data.
Bithumb lost $13,000,000
April 1, 2019 — CoinDesk
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb has had around $13 million in the EOS cryptocurrency stolen in a hack it suspects was an insider job.
The company confirmed in statement on Saturday that it first spotted an abnormal withdrawal of the cryptocurrency through its monitoring system.
Coinbene lost $100,000,000
March 25, 2019 — Cointelegraph
Over $100 Million Missing: CoinBene Claims Maintenance, a Month of Questions Point Toward a Hack
DragonEx faced a cyber-attack
March 24, 2019 — CoinDesk
DragonEx announced the news on its official Telegram channel on Monday, stating that, on Sunday, March 24, it had suffered a cyberattack that saw cryptocurrency funds owned by users and the exchange transferred and stolen.
No information has yet been provided on the value of the losses.
Coinmama faced user data leak
February 15, 2019 — CCN
The official statement of the exchange disclosed that 450,000 email addresses and passwords were leaked in a massive global hacking attack involving 24 websites and some 747 million records.
Cryptopia lost $3,620,000
February 15, 2019 — CoinDesk
The exchange announced the news on Twitter, stating that it suffered a security breach which resulted in significant losses.
Meanwhile, tweets from Whale Alert indicated that 19,391 (ETH) tokens worth nearly $2.44 million and around 48 million centrality (CENNZ) tokens worth about $1.18 million were transferred from Cryptopia to unknown wallets on Jan. 13.
MapleChange lost $5,000,000
October 28, 2018 — Blockonomi
Canadian crypto exchange Maple Change has been hacked. The company is reporting over $5 million in losses - virtually all its funds - and says it cannot pay any of its customers back.
However, many are questioning whether the company was hacked or if the loss was something planned by internal representatives..
Zaif lost $60,000,000
September 14, 2018 — CoinDesk
Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange has been hacked, losing a 6.7 billion yen (about $60 million worth of cryptocurrency), including 5,966 bitcoins.
Bancor lost $23,500,000
July 9, 2018 — TechCrunch
Bancor, a crypto company that touts a decentralized exchange service, has lost some $23.5 million of cryptocurrency tokens belonging to its users following a hack.
Bithumb lost $31,000,000
June 19, 2018 — CoinDesk
Roughly 35 billion Korean won (around $31 million) in cryptocurrency was stolen by hackers from the South Korea-based exchange Bithumb
Coinrail lost $40,000,000
June 10, 2018 — CoinDesk
Coinrail, a cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea, said on Sunday its platform has been hacked, with other sources suggesting it lost cryptocurrencies totaling as much as $40 million in the attack.
BitGrail lost $170,000,000
February 8, 2018 — TechCrunch
On Friday, BitGrail posted a notice to users informing them that hackers had made off with 17 million units of Nano (XRB), the coin formerly known as RaiBlocks
Coincheck lost $500,000,000
January 26, 2018 — Fortune
Early Friday morning in Tokyo, hackers broke into a cryptocurrency exchange called Coincheck Inc. and made off with nearly $500 million in digital tokens.
It's one of the biggest heists in history, with the exchange losing more than 500 million of the somewhat obscure NEM coins.
LocalBitcoins lost $27,000
January 26, 2018 — cryptonews
LocalBitcoins, the popular peer-to-peer market for fiat-to-bitcoin trading, on Saturday said that it had suffered a security breach that lasted about 5 hours before the Finland-based company managed to stop it.
Hackers had reportedly managed to breach at least six user accounts, getting away with more than BTC 7.9 (USD 27,000)
YouBit lost 17% of users' funds
December 19, 2017 — Cryptovest
A relativley small South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Youbit, was reportedly hacked earlier today, and is filing for bankruptcy after losing 17% of users' funds.
Bithumb faced user data leak
June 27, 2017 — BraveNewCoin
Hackers succeeded in grabbing the personal information of 31,800 Bithumb website users, including their names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses.
The exchange claims that this number represents approximately three percent of customers.
Yapizon lost $4,850,000
April 26, 2017 — Cointelegraph
South Korean exchange Yapizon has become the latest victim of hackers. In a notice on Saturday translated on social media, staff confirmed the theft of 3,831 Bitcoins, equivalent to 37.08% of the total assets.
Bitcurex lost $1,500,000
October 13, 2016 — Bitcoin.com
Polish bitcoin exchange Bitcurex just posted an update announcing it will close following a hack. resulting in $1.5m going missing. It's one of the bigger bitcoin exchanges serving the European market, specifically for trading zloty and also euros.
Bitfinex lost $72,000,000
August 2, 2016 — Fortune
Nearly 120,000 units of digital currency bitcoin worth about US$72 million was stolen from the exchange platform Bitfinex in Hong Kong, rattling the global bitcoin community in the second-biggest security breach ever of such an exchange.
ShapeShift lost $200,000
June 30, 2016 — Hacking, Distributed
There was a complicated series of thefts at ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange that calls itself the safest asset exchange on Earth and is used to convert between different virtual currencies.
Thieves broke in three separate times over a time span of two weeks and cleaned out the hot wallets each time, totaling around $200K USD.
Gatecoin lost $2,140,000
May 9, 2016 — CoinDesk
Gatecoin has claimed that it lost as much as 185,000 ethers and 250 bitcoins, an amount worth roughly $2.14m at press time.
The exchange further said that it believes the hack first began on 9th May, and that it continued over the following three days.
Bitfinex lost $329,000
May 22, 2015 — BitcoinMagazine
Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Bitfinex announced around 5 a.m. EDT today the startup's hot wallets were compromised and some bitcoin were stolen.
If correct, it would put the amount of bitcoin lost in the hack just more than 1,400 or around 0.06 percent of the company's total holdings.
KipCoin lost $728,000
February 18, 2015 — NEWSBTC
On February 18, the day of the Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve, a message was posted on their website stating that their wallet servers were hacked and that they had lost over 3000 BTC.
BTER lost $1,750,000
February 14, 2015 — CoinDesk
Digital currency exchange BTER announced that it has lost 7,170 bitcoins, or roughly $1.75 million at press time, in an apparent hack on its cold wallet system.
796 lost $270,000
January 27, 2015 — Cointelegraph
According to the explanation, hackers had compromised areas of the exchange in the previous days, which had caused a user to mention the current address has been tampered with.
Reports are emerging of Chinese Bitcoin exchange 796 mistakenly losing 1000BTC of customer funds in a botched customer service request.
Bitstamp lost $5,100,000
January 4, 2015 — CoinDesk
On January 4th, some of Bitstamp's operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC.
This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp's total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are are held in secure offline cold storage systems.
Cryptsy lost $9,580,000
July 29, 2014 — CoinDesk
The exchange alleges in a newly released blog post that it was the target of a hack in July 2014, an incident that it said cost it approximately 13,000 BTC ($7.5m at the time) and approximately 300,000 LTC (then $2.08m).
MintPal lost $1,933,000
July 14, 2014 — CoinDesk
Digital currency exchange platform MintPal has suffered a successful hack attack that resulted in the loss millions of vericoins from its hot wallet.
The breach resulted in the loss of roughly 8 million vericoins (VRC), or about 30% of the total coins in existence, a member of the vericoin development team told CoinDesk.
Crypto Rush lost $630,000
March 11, 2014 — CCN
The first hacking he witnessed cost the exchange 950 Bitcoins and 2500 Litecoins. A large amount considering CryptoRush is one of the smaller exchanges.
Poloniex lost $67,500
March 4, 2014 — CoinDesk
Digital currency exchange Poloniex, which trades bitcoin and other popular digital currencies such as litecoin, namecoin and dogecoin, has lost 12.3% of its total bitcoin supply in an attack. 97 BTC were taken and 97 BTC were paid back
Flexcoin lost $600,000
March 2, 2014 — CoinDesk
Alberta-based bitcoin storage specialist Flexcoin has announced that it will shut down following an attack and subsequent robbery that saw cybercriminals abscond with 896 BTC (roughly $600,000 at press time) stored in the company's hot wallets.
Picostocks lost $4,434,000
February 17, 2014 — WIRED
The stock market suffered a hack attack in June 2013 in which 1,300 bitcoins were stolen. PicoStocks announced that it had been robbed again.
This time a total of 5,896 bitcoins were missing from both its hot and cold wallets. Because cold wallets can't be accessed in online attacks, the theft may have been an inside job.
Mt.Gox lost $661,348,000
February 7, 2014 — Blockonomi
A leaked corporate document claimed that hackers had raided that Mt. Gox exchange and stole 744,408 bitcoins belonging to Mt. Gox customers, as well as an additional 100,000 bitcoins belonging to the company, resulting in the exchange being declared to be insolvent.
Inputs.io lost $1,200,000
October 23, 2013 — CoinDesk
Two hacks totalling about 4100 BTC have left Inputs.io unable to pay all user balances. The attacker compromised the hosting account through compromising email accounts (some very old, and without phone numbers attached, so it was easy to reset). The attacker was able to bypass 2FA due to a flaw on the server host side.
Vircurex lost $352,000
May 10, 2013 — Vircurex
The attacker has acquired login credentials to our VPS control account with our hosting service provider and has then asked for the root password reset of all servers. The total losses of the security breach are 1454 BTC 225,263 TRC 23,400 LTC
Bitfloor lost $250,000
September 3, 2012 — Bitcoin Magazine
Bitfloor, has just announced that it has been hacked, and the service has taken a loss of 24,000 BTC, worth about $250,000 at the time of the theft.
Bitcoinica lost $300,000
July 2012 — Block Stuffs
Bitcoinica was robbed for the third time when 40,000 BTC were stolen, but this time all the funds were secretly held in Mt. Gox. These funds were also reported to be refunded.
Bitcoinica lost $87,000
May 2012 — Block Stuffs
Just after the weeks of the first attack, Bitcoinica was raided again. This time hackers accessed Bitcoinica's user's database including all their identification details and sensitive data. This time, they stole 38,000 BTC.
Bitcoinica lost $228,000
March 2012 — Block Stuffs
The hot wallets stored on the Linode's server were unencrypted by the hacker and they stole 43,554 bitcoins. In this attack, several individuals that used Linode lost the fund.
Bitcoin7 faced user data leak
October 5, 2011 — SiliconANGLE
On Oct 5, 2011 the Bitcoin7 exchange website posted a message to its users that it had been subject to a hacking intrusion that compromised their wallets and their user database.
The sensitive information includes: Scanned ID/Passport, Proof of address/utility bill, Proof of funding or your bank statement, ABA/SWIFT number for bank transfer, Bank name and address.
Mt.Gox lost $8,750,000
June 19, 2011 — Wikipedia
A security breach of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after a hacker allegedly used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor's compromised computer to transfer a large number of bitcoins illegally to himself.
He used the exchange's software to sell them all nominally, creating a massive ask order at any price. Within minutes the price corrected to its correct user-traded value. Accounts with the equivalent of more than $8,750,000 were affected.