- The 8 Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History By Value
- Chronological List Of The Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: Mt Gox’s Legendary Losses
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: The Bitfinex Hack
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: The DAO Hack
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: Coincheck’s Multi-Million Dollar Hack
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks in History: KuCoin
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks in History: PolyNetwork
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks in History: BitMart
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: Wormhole
- Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History And How They Happened: Final Thoughts
As cryptocurrency’s use and influence spread, the industry has become big business for investors, corporations, wallets, custodians, exchanges, and, unavoidably, hackers. One of the most significant hurdles for widespread consumer and corporate adoption is the paramount issue of security.
Some of the largest cryptocurrency hacks in history happened in crypto’s more recent years, and hackers have managed to pry apart hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other currencies from a multitude of exchanges.
Some platforms are fully refunded by honorable hackers, and in likely cases, they are not, and many platforms attempt to make their users whole by reimbursing them with the company’s revenue.
Realistically, many losses are never recovered. To completely understand these cryptocurrency thefts, we’ve examined the largest crypto hacks in history, how they happened, and the methods that have been taken to prevent them from happening again.
The 8 Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History By Value
#1 Poly Network Hack, $610M
#2 Coincheck Hack, $533M
#3 Mt Gox Hack, $470M
#4 The Wormhole Hack, $321M
#5 KuCoin Hack, $281M
#6 Bitmart Hack, $196M
#7 Bitfinex Hack, $72M
#8 The DAO Hack, $70M
Chronological List Of The Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History
Here’s a chronological table of the largest cryptocurrency hacks in history and how they happened. We’ve also attached their rank by value (i.e., the amount initially stolen by hackers.)
Platform
Date of Hack
Method
Value Stolen
Mt. Gox, #3
2011 – 2014
Various
$470M
Bitfinex #7
August 2016
Unknown
~$72M
The DAO #8
May 2016
System Bug
$70M
Coincheck #2
January 2018
Phishing Malware
$533M
KuCoin #5
September 2020
Unknown
$281M
Poly Network #1
August 2021
Targeted System Vulnerability; Brute Force
$610M
Bitmart #6
December 2021
Unknown
$196M
The Wormhole #4
February 2022
Targeted System Vulnerability
$321M
Editor’s note: The cryptocurrency world has undergone hundreds of hacks. Information on the current dollar value of assets compromised in each hack varies due to the versatility of cryptocurrencies, so we’ve ranked each hack by the value of the theft at its occurrence, heedless of whether or not funds were recovered. While we’ve done our best to find and share the vulnerability exploited by hackers, it was not possible to find out exactly how a hack happened in many cases.
Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks In History: Mt Gox’s Legendary Losses
Ranked #3, the Mt Gox hack was the first significant digital currency theft, and it remains one of the most well-known.
Once the world’s largest exchange, Mt Gox was a company in Tokyo, Japan. At one point in its four-year reign, this now-defunct crypto trader handled nearly 70% of all Bitcoin transactions.
In 2006, Mt Gox was set up by a programmer named Jed McCaleb. The site was initially meant to serve as a card exchanging platform for the popular card game “Magic: The Gathering,” which is the story behind its name. “Mt. Gox” stands for Magic: The Gathering — Online eXchange.
However, in July 2010, McCaleb (who went on to found Ripple) published what would become the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange on the same domain after reading about Bitcoin and realizing that the crypto community needed a “good way to buy and sell Bitcoins.”
Later, McCaleb sold his project to French programmer and entrepreneur Mark Karpeles. After this sale, McCaleb retained admin rights to audit transactions and remained entitled to Mt Gox’s profits for six months.
While Mt Gox grew to become a massive crypto trading giant, its backend development processes stalled under Karpeles’ management. This led to a series of successful cyber attacks occurring between the first confirmed security breach in 2011 and continuing until a massive heist in 2014.
In total, Mt Gox’s attackers made off with about 744,000 bitcoins,
