Digital asset losses in February at lowest level since March 2025

February has proven to be a strong month for the digital asset sector, as it recorded the lowest value lost to hacks since March 2025 at $26.5 million. This represents a remarkable 98.2% year-on-year decrease compared to the losses experienced last February, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.

In a post on X on March 1, PeckShield said the total losses also represented a notable 69.2% month-on-month decrease from January of this year, which saw $86.01 million lost to hacks.

The $26.5 million in losses in February resulted from 15 reported instances, with two accounting for the majority of the losses. Namely, the $10 million theft from YieldBlox’s DAO-managed lending pool, via a price manipulation attack, and the $8.8 million theft from Crypto-AI project IoTeX, after a private key compromise gave an attacker unauthorized control over the project’s TokenSafe and MinterPool smart contracts; coincidentally, both incidents occurred on February 21.

In further good news, a spokesperson for PeckShield reportedly told digital asset news site Cointelegraph that “mega-hacks,” such as the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, didn’t inflate this February’s statistics. Although they said part of the reduction in digital asset hacks may be due to market volatility, which led to a significant cooling period in exploit activity.

Either way, the numbers will be music to the ears of digital asset advocates who may have grown accustomed to increasingly negative headlines about crypto crime.

For example, it was reported that over $370 million in digital assets was stolen through exploits and scams this January, more than three times the amount stolen in the same period last year, and the highest monthly figure in 11 months.

French police were also recently compelled to comment on the alarming rise in so-called “wrench attacks”—violent kidnappings, torture, and home invasions, with the aim of coercing victims to transfer digital assets under threat of physical violence—with a confidential January 15 memo from France’s organized crime agency reportedly stating that the attacks are no longer isolated incidents but rather a phenomenon that criminal networks have exploited.

With this in mind, advocates and lawmakers alike can’t allow complacency to creep in, despite Peckshield’s promising March 1 report.

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