Cryptocurrency theft and exploits have continued at historically high levels in 2025, with industry data showing more than $2.53 billion in exploit-related losses this year – and broader theft figures pushing that total even higher, according to Sentora and a recent Chainalysis report.
Sentora’s latest chart on “Total TVL of Exploits 2025” details how the losses occurred. It reveals that social engineering remains the dominant attack technique, accounting for 55.3% ($1.39 billion) of the exploit value exploited to date.
Other techniques, such as private key compromise, Infinite Mint attacks, and smart contract exploits, together account for the rest of the losses.
Social engineering and human-centric attacks are on the rise
THE Sentora data highlights how much the focus of exploitation has changed. Although smart contract bugs and protocol vulnerabilities remain major concerns, social engineering now far outweighs purely technical exploits.
Source: Sentora
Private key compromises, which can be linked to phishing, malware, or improper credential management, accounted for 15% of exploit losses ($0.37 billion).
This highlights how adversaries are increasingly targeting human and operational weaknesses alongside traditional code flaws.
Industry-Wide Feats Top $3 Billion
Separate the 2025 analysis by On-Chain Analysiscorroborated by estimates from industry monitoring firms, suggests that between $2.7 billion and $3.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen this year across all categories.
This includes major single-event breaches, thefts of personal wallets, and other illicit activities.
Hackers linked to North Korea have once again emerged as the most prolific threat actors. Chainalysis reported that at least $2.02 billion in stolen crypto this year was linked to DPRK-affiliated groups, a roughly 51% year-over-year increase from 2024 levels.
Much of that total comes from a record exploit by the Bybit exchange, where attackers stole around $1.4 billion in assets.
Exploiting the Changing Landscape
Industry analysts say the broader trend reflects improvements in automated auditing, formal verification and protocol security tools, making large smart contract vulnerabilities rarer.
Meanwhile, attackers have opted for tactics that exploit privileged users and access.
Chainalysis has also noted a sharp increase in personal wallet thefts this year, with thousands of individual victims affected. However, these losses per incident were lower than those of large-scale institutional hacks.
What this means for the ecosystem
Taken together, the data suggests that exploit mitigation in 2025 has less to do with fixing code and more to do with improving user security, key management practices, and operational hygiene between exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers.
Final Thoughts
- Crypto losses in 2025 are driven far more by human and operational failures than by smart contract bugs, with social engineering now the dominant attack vector.
- As attackers increasingly bypass protocol code to target users, wallets, and access controls, improving user security and operational safeguards has become as essential as technical audits to reduce future losses.
