bitcoin ·
Centralized Exchange and DeFi Losses Dominate 2026 Crypto Hacks Despite Hardware Wallet Failures
Crypto hacks have produced roughly $2.35 billion in net losses so far in 2026 after freezes and returns, according to a report by Lightning.news shared with Bitcoin Magazine.
A security researcher by the name of Stacy Muur posted on X compiled “a list of protocols that were hacked for more than $50,000 in 2026.” September alone accounted for about $768 million in Muur’s tally, driven mainly by centralized exchanges and DeFi rather than pure Bitcoin self-custody hardware wallets, which got significant news coverage at the time.
The largest single loss was Bitget’s September 24 drain of roughly $387.5 million from hot and warm wallets. The exchange and firms including Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs have linked the incident to North Korea, citing IP patterns consistent with prior DPRK-linked VPN use, on-chain overlaps with wallets tied to earlier Lazarus Group and TraderTraitor activity, including the 2025 Bybit theft.
