During the first quarter of this year, there were several important regulatory and strategic changes that affected the Web3 industry. For example, the US government announced creation of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has established a working group on cryptocurrencies, the European Union (EU) has finalized technical standards as part of its efforts to comply with cryptocurrency laws through the regulation of cryptocurrency asset markets (MiCA). But the number of cybercrimes related to cryptocurrencies has also increased. Or rather, the value of stolen assets.
In the first quarter of 2025, $1.67 billion worth of cryptocurrencies have already been stolen. For comparison, $2.4 billion was stolen in all of 2024.
However, the overwhelming amount of losses since the beginning of this year has been caused by North Korean hackers Lazarus that stole $1.45 billion from the Bybit crypto exchange.
It is worth noting that one of the most acute problems this quarter was the increase in the number of private key compromises, which led to the theft of $142 million in 15 incidents. Only 0.38% of the stolen funds were recovered, compared to 42.09% in the previous quarter. In February 2025, not a single stolen penny was recovered.
Ethereum has once again become the most exploitable chain. As a result of 98 incidents, crypto assets worth $1.54 billion were stolen. Ethereum’s dominance in decentralized finance (DeFi) and smart contracts makes it a lucrative target for hackers, as there are billions of dollars locked in the protocols.
Source: Certik
