In the last month of 2024, the number of scams, hacks, and other such incidents especially in the crypto market has declined compared to the cases in October and November of the previous year.
CertiK X post of December 31 reads crypto market lost $28.6 million in known hacks, scams, and thefts which is comparatively less than that reported in November and October.
It identified GemPad as one of the most significant events resulting in losses of $2.1 million. The decentralized platform lost an amount of crypto following the breach in the smart contract of the protocol.
The firm identified the hack of the FEG token bridge as the second most significant incident that wiped out $1 million worth of crypto. Breaches in smart contracts of the protocol must raise concerns over the safety of investors and holders.
A similar post by Peakshield of Jan 01, 2025 notes that the total number of scams and other such incidents in the last month of 2024 was 71 percent less than that in November. The total amount lost in December 2024 was $24.7 million, with over 25 incident reports.
The firm named the incident of LastPass as one of the most significant attacks resulting in losses of over $12.30 million followed by Yeyi Finance which lost $2.2 million similar to GemPad.
Scams, fraud, and hacks hindering Crypto growth!
The surged popularity, adoption, and price of crypto the rate of occurrence of fraudulent activities, scams, and hacks.
Since the widespread cryptocurrencies, no such month passed that saw zero losses every month the market lost an average of $5 to $8 million in losses. The surged scam has given birth to fear among digital currency enthusiasts of losing their holdings in cyber thefts.
A report published in Sep ending in 2024 notes that the Lazarus Group of North Korea remains the entity behind major losses to the crypto market, the group or entity gathers billions of dollars in crypto by defrauding innocent investors, firms, and giant investors.
Lazarus is also suspected of being responsible for the hack of Euler Finance, a decentralized finance platform on the Polygon network, losing about $200 million.
The N. Korean hackers have stolen more than $200 million in 2023 alone. This includes the July loss of $60 million in digital assets from CoinsPaid and Alphapo, a payments provider, and the June theft of almost $100 million in virtual currency from Atomic Wallet.
Cyvers’s 2024 Web3 Security Report, which was released with a well-known crypto media source on December 24, 165 instances totaling $2.3 billion in crypto theft occurred in 2024.
In comparison to 2023, when hackers stole $1.69 billion worth of digital assets, Cyvers claims that this represented a 40% rise.
It is important to remember that centralized exchanges continue to be the major target of these scammers and criminal actors. In 2024, exchanges were accountable for half of the losses incurred by the cryptocurrency industry.
