Over the past 18 months, cryptocurrency platforms suffered losses of more than $3.6 billion due to hacker attacks and thefts. This was reported in a CoinGecko study published in a CNBC report on September 8. Despite independent security audits having been conducted, approximately 88% of lost funds and 60% of affected platforms had undergone such checks prior to the attack. The majority of incidents occurred between January 2025 and July 2026. The largest case was the theft of $1.4 billion from Bybit in February 2025, followed by KelpDao with $292 million and Drift Protocol with $285 million.
Additionally, on September 6, a hacker withdrew $320 million from the Liquid Network under the guise of a "white hat" attack. In earlier incidents involving Coldcard customer wallets, more than $115 million in Bitcoin was stolen. In total, 245 incidents have been recorded since the beginning of 2025, of which 147 involved platforms that had passed audits. These platforms accounted for 88.44% of all lost funds, confirming that even verified systems remain under threat.
The report notes that audits often fail to cover the full spectrum of risks. Most attacks on verified systems are linked to external infrastructure, untested code updates, or governance attacks. Only about 11% of incidents were caused by smart contract vulnerabilities, yet even these resulted in losses of $396 million.
Alongside security concerns, institutional interest in cryptocurrencies remains high. BitMine Immersion Technologies Chairman Tom Lee stated that strong digital asset performance in the third quarter could push institutional investors to increase their positions. According to him, ETH became the best macro asset of the quarter, outperforming the S&P 500 by 5,430 basis points as of last Friday. Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana took the top three spots in returns among macro assets since June 30.
BitMine acquired 28,086 ETH over the past week, bringing its total holdings to 5.9 million tokens. The combined value of the company's crypto assets, cash, and shares as of September 7 stood at $15.7 billion. However, the ETH position remains unprofitable: according to CryptoQuant, unrealized losses amount to approximately $5 billion. Over the past month, ETH has risen by 29.7%, narrowing the gap but not yet turning the position profitable.