New Report: November Month Alone Saw Record-Breaking $4.88 Billion Worth of Crypto Lost or Stolen – Here’s What Happened

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June 26, 2023

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As much as $4.88bn worth of crypto was either lost or stolen in November, with one incident alone accounting for a whopping $2.8bn, a new report from DappRadar has revealed.

According to the report, the single largest case to impact crypto users in November was the halting of withdrawals from Genesis, a major crypto lender and exchange.

Genesis reportedly had $2.8bn in outstanding loans, but was forced to halt all withdrawals after news broke that it had lost access to $175m held on a trading account on the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.

As reported, Genesis has said it is seeking options to avoid a bankruptcy, but the situation around the company, owned by Barry Silbert’s crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG), still remains unclear.

The second-largest case in November was FTX itself, which filed for bankruptcy on November 11. In this case, around $1bn in user funds were deemed to be lost in the bankruptcy, while FTX has also reported an exploit of $380m that happened after withdrawals were halted.

Coming in third for the month was the popular crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, which lost $28m in a hack of one of its hot wallets. The exchange said on Twitter that the loss would not impact its operations or its users, and that the loss will be “paid by company reserves.”

In total, all of the unfortunate incidents in crypto in November added up to $2.8bn worth of lost or stolen crypto, the DappRadar report said.

Worst month for crypto

Moreover, the high value of the crypto that was lost or stolen made November the worst month of the year in terms of the safety of crypto.

The second-worst month of 2022 so far was October, largely due to a single case known as the “Bitcoin Sheikh” fraud where more than $766m were defrauded and laundered.