LONDON (Reuters) – The amount of cryptocurrency stolen in hacks globally more than doubled in the first six months of 2024 from a year earlier, driven by a small number of large attacks and rising crypto prices, blockchain researchers TRM Labs said on Friday.
Hackers had stolen more than $1.38 billion worth of crypto by June 24, 2024, compared with $657 million in the same period in 2023, TRM Labs said in a report.
The median theft was one-and-a-half times larger than the year before, the report said.
“While we have not seen any fundamental changes in the security of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, we have seen a significant increase in the value of various tokens – from bitcoin to ETH (ether) and Solana – compared to the same time last year,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs.
This means that cybercriminals are more motivated to…
