Hackers have grown more sophisticated and continue to rake in billions of dollars from crypto exploits.

The good news? There isn’t any—2024 has officially surpassed last year’s totals for stolen funds, with months of hacks piling on to an already record-breaking year. 

By Q3 2024, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs reported that over $2.2 billion had been stolen in crypto hacks—exceeding the $1.8 billion lost in all of 2023. 

Now, as the year comes to a close, the total continues to climb. Analysis reveals that thefts weren’t limited to the experimental world of decentralized finance, or DeFi; centralized crypto exchanges were also prime targets. 

Here are the biggest crypto heists of 2024.

DMM Bitcoin’s $308 million

Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin lost over 4,500 BTC—worth $308 million at the time—to hackers back in May.

It’s unclear how hackers managed to steal from the exchange, but TRM Labs said that stolen private keys were a plausible explanation.

The company is still shutting down and transferring customer accounts to another exchange, SBI VC Trade, which is taking over its assets.

PlayDapp’s $290 million

Hackers targeted the crypto gaming platform PlayDapp twice in February by exploiting a private key vulnerability. They made off with $290 million in PLA tokens across the two incidents. 

The attackers also ignored a $1 million white hat reward to return the stolen funds. To this day, the funds are still missing. 

WazirX’s $235 million

Indian crypto exchange WazirX was also targeted in June, with hackers running away with close to $235 million. 

WazirX suspended all withdrawals, leaving users unable to access their funds after the hack. Elliptic said that the attack was linked to North Korea.

The exchange’s parent company, Zettai Pte Ltd, secured a four-month moratorium from the Singapore High Court in August in a bid to get its finances in order. 

Things took a weird twist in October when the co-founder of rival exchange CoinSwitch accused WazirX of transferring $75 million worth of user funds to top exchanges Bybit and KuCoin in the wake of the attack. 

WazirX has since said that it’s in the process of “rebalancing tokens,” and clients will soon be informed on the next steps to repay creditors.

Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s $112.5 million

Hackers targeted Ripple co-founder and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen’s XRP stash on January 30. The crypto entrepreneur wrote on X that there had been “unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts,” but reassured people that Ripple itself hadn’t been targeted.

Still, it was a hefty attack, and blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said that hackers made away with about 213 million XRP—$112.5 million at the time—before laundering it through exchanges. Efforts to recover the stolen assets have been unsuccessful.

Orbit Chain’s $80 million 

The year began with a significant DeFi breach, as hackers drained over $80 million from the cross-chain bridge project Orbit Chain on January 1. Criminals took off with Ethereum and the stablecoin DAI in the exploit—and then fell silent.

Months later, millions of dollars of the stolen crypto was moved to coin mixer Tornado Cash. Other than a January statement apologizing for the exploit, the team behind the project has since given little update on what happened—or how it would retrieve the stolen funds. 

BtcTurk’s $54 million 

On June 22, hackers targeted the Turkish crypto exchange BtCTurk—which caters to the country’s budding market. Most of the funds were in the form of Avalanche (AVAX), the 12th-largest digital asset by market capitalization. 

The exchange reassured users that most funds—kept in cold storage—were safe. Meanwhile, a day after the hack, Binance CEO Richard Teng said his exchange had frozen $5.3 million in stolen funds to assist BtcTurk’s efforts.

Radiant Capital’s $50 million

In October, Hackers hit DeFi project Radiant Capital in “one of the most sophisticated hacks ever recorded in DeFi,” making away with $50 million in tokens at the time. 

The breach happened after a Radiant developer received a Telegram message from what appeared to be a former contractor, the protocol said. The message contained a PDF, which was then used to deliver malware and subsequently gain control of several private keys, allowing hackers to steal USDT, USDC, and ARB tokens. 

Radiant Capital, which allows users to earn interest and borrow crypto, has since said that North Korean hackers were behind the attack. 

U.S. government’s $20 million

Hackers even targeted the Feds this year with over $20 million worth of stablecoins and Ethereum disappearing in October from a government wallet containing funds seized from criminals.

The crypto in question was tied to a previous 2016 hack of the Bitfinex exchange. Hackers sent the coins and tokens to a new address, prompting pseudonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT to say it was likely a theft.

Then, the next day, close to $19.3 million worth of the pinched funds were returned to the wallet, data collected by Arkham Intelligence shows. It still isn’t clear what happened to the rest of the stolen crypto—or why hackers returned it in the first place.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Some countries are mulling a national Bitcoin reserve amid a historic market run-up that has pushed the world’s largest cryptocurrency to new heights in recent weeks.

United States President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly thrown their support behind a bill to stock the Federal Reserve with the asset, and will soon be in position to potentially make that a reality.

Government officials in Brazil have also put forth legislation to realize that possibility, while politicians in Poland and Russia have endorsed the idea of adding the digital currency to their nations’ balance sheets.

El Salvador led the charge on this front, making Bitcoin legal tender while gradually amassing BTC for its own reserve starting in 2021—and now President Bukele is taking a victory lap as the asset surges towards $100,000.

While it’s unclear whether other countries will actually stockpile Bitcoin anytime soon, one thing is obvious: Interest in holding the token as a reserve asset has reached a fever pitch. Here’s who is considering a national Bitcoin reserve.

United States

Several U.S. lawmakers have made pushes to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.  

Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming last spring unveiled a bill called the “Bitcoin Act” that calls for the U.S. to acquire as much as 200,000 Bitcoin annually over a five-year period, or up 5% of the token’s total supply.

The Bitcoin would be kept in a “decentralized network of secure Bitcoin vaults operated by the United States Department of Treasury,” with token acquisitions being accomplished through a diversification of existing Federal Reserve funds such as bonds, loans and gold.

President-elect Donald Trump similarly endorsed a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” last July at BTC 2024 in Nashville—one of many such crypto-related promises that he’ll be expected to honor once in office.

“It will be the policy of my administration…to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” Trump said at the event.

Brazil 

Brazil’s government has proposed a bill that would green-light a national Bitcoin reserve. 

The Sovereign Strategic Reserve of Bitcoins (RESBit) would account for 5% of Brazil’s international reserves, according to the proposed legislation, filed on November 25. It aims to diversify the Brazilian Treasury’s assets.

Incorporating Bitcoin into the Treasury “will reduce Brazil’s exposure to exchange rate fluctuations and geopolitical risks, increasing economic resilience,” Federal Deputy Eros Biondini said in the proposed bill.

Under the proposal, Brazil’s Central Bank would manage the Bitcoin reserve in partnership with the Ministry of Finance. Those funds would be used to back Brazil’s CBDC, called Drex. The Bitcoin would be stored in cold wallets, according to the bill.

Poland 

Polish presidential candidate Sławomir Mentzen has advocated for the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, as well as for the passing of crypto-friendly laws and regulations in Poland. 

“If I become the President of Poland, our country will become a cryptocurrency haven, with very friendly regulations, low taxes, and a supportive approach from banks and regulators,” Mentzen said in a recent post on X (formerly known as Twitter).

“It is high time Polish politicians also look to the future,” the politician said in another X post. 

The far-right nationalist candidate is running third in the polls in the Eastern European country. It is unclear if Mentzen’s political opponents also support the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Russia 

Several Russian legislators this month have suggested creating a “stash of” crypto in “the state Treasury,” despite opposition from Russian State Duma Committee Chairman Anatoly Aksakov. 

They also succeeded in passing legislation legalizing crypto mining and the use of digital assets for international payments this fall. 

Russia’s recent change of tune on crypto suggests the Eastern European country could revisit the issue of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which at least one of its top officials has previously expressed support for.

In a 2021 interview with Russian news outlet Interfax, Deputy Minister Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Pankin expressed an openness to partially replacing the country’s U.S. dollar-backed reserves and trade settlements with other currencies, including cryptocurrencies. 

Russia could replace U.S. dollars with various national currencies as well as “in the future, probably…some kind of digital assets,” Pankin told the outlet.

Edited by Andrew Hayward and Sebastian Sinclair

In the wake of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s bombshell arrest in France last weekend and subsequent criminal indictment, much is still uncertain—particularly, how the high-stakes drama will impact Telegram’s massive crypto ambitions. 

This year, Telegram became perhaps the most prominent company to ever jump with both feet into the cryptosphere. The dominant messaging service encouraged the proliferation of an ecosystem of on-chain, in-app games and services powered by Telegram’s blockchain of choice, The Open Network (TON). Those so-called “mini apps” exploded in popularity this spring, largely thanks to their ability to earn users crypto rewards via token airdrops. 

Momentum from mini app activity catapulted Telegram to a record 950 million monthly active users in July, and Telegram has directly embraced TON by using it to pay channel operators a share of advertising revenue, along with launching an in-app currency called Stars that’s linked with TON.

The company’s new path appeared so limitless that some TON developers prophesied the app might soon ride its on-chain mini app model to become the West’s version of China’s “everything app,” WeChat.

But crypto is also, notoriously, a legally risky sandbox to play in. So now that Telegram appears to have awoken the regulatory beast, could the company’s crypto future be in jeopardy?

“How big do they want to get?”

The charges filed against Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday do not mention cryptocurrency whatsoever. They focus instead on content related to illegal topics like child pornography and drug sales that Durov allegedly allowed to proliferate on his platform. 

But the timing of the indictment—in the midst of Telegram’s aggressive push to make crypto-backed financial services a central offering—speaks loudly, according to Seth Goertz, a former U.S. Attorney specializing in cryptocurrency and cybersecurity.

“The more they go down that road, the more they’re inviting scrutiny,” Goertz told Decrypt of Telegram’s finance and commerce-related ambitions. “How big do they want to get?”

The former prosecutor specifically pointed to the integration, in April, of the popular stablecoin Tether (USDT) with both TON and the Wallet app on Telegram. While the move was a massive boon for Telegram’s mini apps, allowing users to transact in a dollar-backed currency that doesn’t fluctuate nearly as much as TON’s native token, the stablecoin also has a long track record of fueling illicit activity due to that same attractiveness.  

“If governments are seeing large amounts of Tether being moved through Telegram, it is going to attract tremendous scrutiny, for sure,” Goertz said. “The dollar is a powerful thing.”

Decrypt reached out to numerous TON developers and creators of Telegram mini apps for this story regarding their views on Durov’s arrest, and how it might impact the future of Telegram’s crypto-related ambitions. All declined comment.

Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

Crypto tech vs. crypto attitude

Not everyone is adamant that the factors that compelled the French government to arrest Durov have anything to do with crypto or any other technology peddled by Telegram—potentially indicating that the company’s “everything app” ambitions may not be the center of the story. 

Despite this week’s uproar on Crypto Twitter—which framed Durov’s arrest as an assault on user rights to privacy—Ben Rubin, the founder of the once-trendy, since-shuttered video chat app Houseparty, believes Telegram didn’t ruffle many feathers with its actual privacy features.

In reality, the app is actually less secure by default than other popular messaging platforms with automatic end-to-end encryption like Signal, iMessage, and even WhatsApp.

Crucially, though, Telegram’s leadership is notoriously standoffish when it comes to dealing with government entities. This created a perfect storm, in Rubin’s opinion, with Telegram sitting on lots of vulnerable data about its users, but refusing to hand it over. 

“My intuition is that this has nothing to do with crypto,” Rubin told Decrypt. “When a platform not only doesn’t protect user privacy—by not introducing end-to-end encryption—but also pisses off the regulators, you get the situation that you’re in now.”

In that sense, Telegram and Durov may now be in trouble less due to crypto tech, and more due to embodying the same kind of anti-establishment attitude that has fueled the crypto industry and made Durov something of a free speech icon.

When French prosecutors announced charges against Durov on Wednesday, they specifically underscored how Telegram’s failure to communicate whatsoever with government entities was a crucial factor that aggravated the entire situation.

“This indictment is the result of a thorough investigation into Telegram’s near-total lack of response to judicial requests, which has been a concern for multiple law enforcement agencies across Europe,” prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Rubin, who is currently building Towns, a permissionless app for group chats that runs on Ethereum layer-2 network Base, said such conflict could be easily avoided if Telegram adopted an inverse to its current approach: encrypting all user messages automatically, and letting law enforcement in—when necessary—to parse through other more extraneous data.  

“This is how you actually find a good balance where the regulators don’t have too much access to things, and they cannot abuse the power,” Rubin said. 

“But they actually need to do work,” he added of regulators. “And I think we will be in trouble if, for anyone who builds online communication, regulators come and ask to cooperate and we all give them the finger. That’s not going to work out.”

In recent days, Durov’s arrest has become a rallying cry for tech leaders ranging from Elon Musk to prominent crypto investor and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.

Crypto advocates in particular have rushed to the Telegram founder’s defense, framing his prosecution as an existential attack on the foundational pillars of the decentralization movement. 

But was it actually groundbreaking crypto tech that so irked the French government in Durov’s case? Or rather, his defiant and dogmatic personification of the crypto persona?

Edited by Andrew Hayward