Exit Scams and Exploits Led to $160M Losses in Crypto Sector in February

In February, the crypto industry saw losses totaling approximately $160 million due to exploits, hacks, and scams. The figures represented a slight dip from January despite an increase in prices.

According to the latest update by CertiK, exit scams claimed the lion’s share at $58.2 million, followed by exploits at $101 million. Phishing accounted for $14.6 million, while $6.4 million was successfully recovered. Flash loans incurred minimal losses at $138k.

• Hong Kong-based crypto exchange BitForex topped CertiK’s chart, with its hot wallets witnessing outflows of around $56.5 million in assets a day before the platform stopped processing transactions. It went offline, and the team was unresponsive to user requests.

#CertiKStatsAlert 🚨

Combining all the incidents in February we’ve confirmed ~$160M lost to exploits, hacks and scams

The total is a slight decrease from January with phishing accounting for ~$14.6m

Exit scams: ~$58.2m
Flash loans: ~$138k
Exploits: ~$101M
Returned: ~$6.4M… pic.twitter.com/E15cqbeELQ

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) February 29, 2024

• Next up was the crypto gaming platform PlayDapp, which lost $32.4 million after hackers stole private keys to mint and steal over 1.79 billion PLA tokens.
• FixedFloat, a decentralized exchange that lost close to $26 million worth of Bitcoin and Ether in a hack, was the third major incident in February on CertiK’s list, followed by Jihoz.Ron and Seneca with $9.7 million and $6.5 million.
• Since the beginning of this year, exit scams claimed $62.54 million in losses.
• Meanwhile, flash loan attacks resulted in $138k in losses throughout February as compared to a whopping $15.3 million in January, bringing total year-to-date (YTD) losses of $15.409 million.
• The top five flash loan attacks were BurnsDefi with $64,000 losses, followed by ZoomerCoin, Azuma ERC 404, Synthetix, and RabbitERCX with losses of $41,120, $26,116, $3,663, and $2,756 respectively.
• As of 2024, the year-to-date losses stand at more than $343.5 million.