Crypto’s Quietest Month In Nearly A Year — But Hackers Haven’t Gone Away

The month of February was unusually quiet for crypto thieves, with the industry recording just $26.5 million in total hack and scam-related damages, the smallest monthly figure in 11 months. This number is a significant decrease from the losses seen in early 2025, when a single breach wiped out $1.5 billion from crypto exchange Bybit. Out of 15 recorded incidents in February, two attacks were responsible for most of the losses, with the bigger one hitting YieldBlox, a DAO-managed lending pool, and draining $10 million from the protocol. The same day, decentralized identity platform IoTeX was also struck, with close to $9 million taken through a private key exploit. These two incidents alone made up over 70% of the month's total losses, which represents a 69% decline from the $86 million recorded in January. The drop in losses is attributed to the absence of a headline-grabbing, billion-dollar breach, as well as market conditions, with Bitcoin dipping below $70,000 in early February, triggering a broad market correction. The improvement in security may also be due to tighter risk controls, stronger vetting of counterparties, and better real-time monitoring across major platforms. Artificial intelligence is being credited as a rising force in the fight against vulnerabilities, with automated code checks and anomaly detection tools catching problems earlier. However, phishing attacks remain a serious and ongoing problem, with bad actors shifting their attention away from targeting code and toward targeting people. The firm urged both institutions and large holders to rely on multi-signature cold storage solutions and to treat private key security as non-negotiable to prevent such attacks.