The number has increased by over 1,100% since March, largely because of a $330,000,000 Bitcoin theft targeted at an elderly US citizen through social engineering. Even after excluding this particular case, the losses rose 21% due to phishing attacks and vulnerabilities in access. White hat hackers were able to recover $18,2 million including the full return from both the ZKsync and KiloEx incidents. The month also shed light on how sophisticated crypto crimes are becoming. In the first quarter 2025, 1.8 millions tokens failed–almost half of those since 2021.
Exploiters Strike Hard in April
In April 2025, crypto-related losses soared by 1,163% over the month before. According to CertiK, a blockchain security company. This is according to a report by blockchain security firm CertiK.
The massive increase in the number of Bitcoins was due to a single event. The theft of 3,520 Bitcoins was the result of a sophisticated heist that targeted an elderly US citizen.
Even if this one case were excluded, April’s total losses would still be $34,000,000, a 21.1% increase over March. Social engineering, Access Control Vulnerabilities, Today’s VIral Level= DarkGray manipulation, and access control vulnerabilities also contributed to the losses.
In spite of the alarming statistics, April saw some positive changes. In April, white hat hackers recovered around $18,2 million. KiloEx’s exploiter returned $7.5m just four days following the attack that caused the exchange to suspend operations. ZKsync Association recovered $5 million worth of tokens following a breach in security that targeted its airdrop contract. Loopscale, a DeFi Protocol, recovered roughly half the $5.7 Million that had been lost due to an exploit involving RateX PT token price mechanism.
Although April was a bad month, the crypto-losses in February 2025 were still worse than any other month this year. The staggering hack of $1.4 billion Bybit attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group is the reason for this. This is the biggest crypto-hack ever recorded. The end of 2024, however, saw the losses steadily decline, from $115.8 in October to just $28.6 in December. This is down from $63.8 in November.
An Elderly Investor loses $330M
In April, the biggest incident was when a US elderly individual lost 3,520 Bitcoin worth approximately $330.7 Million. ZachXBT, an on-chain investigative team member, announced the heist on April 28th 2025.
The attackers described it as a sophisticated social engineering attack. It was done quickly using the peel chain method, which involves breaking large amounts into smaller ones and distributing them through multiple wallets in order to hide their trail.
This attacker laundered Bitcoin quickly across six exchanges, and converted much of it to Monero. Monero is a cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy. Monero’s Where to Buy spiked by 50 percent to $339 in a short time.
Monero’s today’s viral level = Brown activity over the last 24 hours. (Source:CoinMarketCap )
Hacken researcher Yehor Rudytsia said that more than 30 wallets, 20 exchanges or payment services were all involved in this laundering scheme. Hacken’s Extractor tool tracked $284,000,000 worth of Bitcoin across these networks. This amount was diluted down to $60,000,000 due to fund splits and redistributions.
Binance has confirmed that it is involved in the investigation. Experts have pointed out, however, that bureaucratic legal processes often slow down efforts to freeze assets at centralized exchanges. To complicate the tracking process, the attacker converted a tiny amount of stolen BTC into Ethereum and then deposited that on various platforms.
ZachXBT, along with other analysts, dismissed the theory that the Lazarus Group of North Korea was behind the attack by pointing out the fact that the techniques used were not in line with their known patterns. This level of coordination and automation suggests that this attack was carried out by highly-sophisticated, independent hackers. They prepared the accounts for exchanges and counters ahead of time.
Post by ZackXBT
Experts in security explained that due to Monero’s features of privacy, funds converted to Monero are nearly impossible to track. The chances of recovering stolen Bitcoins are therefore very low. To better safeguard their crypto assets, they also recommended that cryptocurrency holders use multisignature wallets and rotate keys regularly, limit exposure to hot wallets online, store large amounts in cold wallets and avoid using online wallets.
The incident adds to a year that has seen a record number of crypto-thefts. Hackers stole $1.6 billion worth of crypto assets in the first quarter 2025.
Q1 2025 Sees Record Token Failures
Crypto investors did not lose their money only through fraud. Data from CoinGecko shows that a record number of tokens will fail in 2025. One in four tokens created since 2021 have failed during the first quarter.
In its report of April 30, the platform revealed that almost 1.8 million tokens had stopped trading during Q1 2025. This is the largest number ever recorded for a quarter. Around 7 million tokens were listed in GeckoTerminal by CoinGecko since 2021. Over half of them, or approximately 3.7 millions, are now considered to be failed.
Shaun Paul Lee, a research analyst at CoinGecko, attributed this increase to the broader instability of the market after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in 2025. Bitcoin reached new heights in this time period. However, the market experienced a rapid downturn that impacted other crypto markets and led to many project failures.
The explosion of tokens generated by Pump.fun – a platform for token creation that was launched in January 2024 – is another major contributor to the collapse in token prices. This tool simplified the launch of tokens dramatically, which resulted in a flood meme coins and easy crypto projects.
Most of these tokens did not make it to 2024. While the year was a record for launches, many projects failed. 98% of the tokens that were created on Pump.fun did not make it beyond their initial bonding curve to become tradeable in open markets.
In order to put recent token failures into context, nearly half the total number of token failures recorded since 2021 occurred in the first quarter 2025. The second highest number of failures per year was recorded at 1.3 millions in 2024, while 2021-2023 had relatively few.
(Source: CoinGecko)
Bobby Ong, founder of CoinGecko, said in early March that the investor interest for meme currencies has decreased. This is especially true after several high profile failures such as LIBRA. The trading volume on Pump.fun peaked after Trump’s coin was launched Jan. 18, but both the crypto and traditional markets have been shaken by Trump’s threats to impose tariffs in March.
