If you’ve followed cryptocurrency over the years, you’ve probably grown accustomed to seeing headlines about massive hacks that wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars overnight. So it may come as a surprise that while crypto is getting hacked more often than ever, the amount of money being stolen is actually heading in the opposite direction.
According to new data from Immunefi, the crypto industry experienced a record 207 hack incidents during the first half of 2026. Despite that surge in attacks, total losses came in at about $972 million, less than half of what was lost during the first half of 2025 and the first time losses have fallen below $1 billion in years.
That doesn’t mean crypto has suddenly become safe. Losing nearly a billion dollars in six months is still an astonishing figure. But it does suggest that the industry’s security efforts are beginning to pay off, even if attackers haven’t slowed down.
The report points to a maturing security ecosystem. Bug bounty programs, security researchers, and audit competitions are helping projects identify vulnerabilities before criminals can exploit them. Immunefi says DeFi exploit losses have dropped 74 percent from their 2022 peak, falling from $2.62 billion to $680.3 million, while the median loss per exploit has declined by 75 percent over the same period.
Another interesting shift is where attacks are happening. Rather than focusing solely on flaws in smart contracts, many of the biggest incidents now stem from compromised private keys, infrastructure weaknesses, cross-chain configurations, and privileged-access failures. In other words, attackers are increasingly targeting the systems surrounding crypto rather than just the code itself.
I wouldn’t call this a victory lap for the crypto industry. Record-breaking attack volume is nothing to celebrate. Still, if nearly the same number of criminals are trying to break in but walking away with much less money, that’s a sign that the industry’s defenses may finally be catching up. It won’t stop the headlines about hacks, but it could mean those headlines become a little less catastrophic over time.
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