Crypto hacks climb 15% in August as $163M stolen across 16 incidents

Blockchain security firm PeckShield’s latest analysis shows that August crypto hacks and exploits went up by 15% from ￰0￱ security firm reported that more than $163 million in digital assets was stolen across 16 ￰1￱ to PeckShield, the highlights of August crypto-related hacks included Turkish exchange BtcTurk, token launchpad ODIN. fun, lending protocol BetterBank, and CrediX ￰2￱ suffers two hacks in 14 months On August 14, cybersecurity firm Cyvers detected unusual activity involving Ether and other tokens on several blockchain ￰3￱ around 01:20 PM BST, Cyvers’ monitoring systems flagged large transactions on Ethereum , Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Mantle, and Polygon. 🚨ALERT🚨$48M worth of digital assets have been detected in unusual activity across multiple chains involving Turkish exchange @btcturk About 30 minutes ago, our system detected multiple alerts across $ETH , $AVAX , $ARB , $BASE , $OP , $MANTLE , and $MATIC ￰4￱ funds were… ￰5￱ — 🚨 Cyvers Alerts 🚨 (@CyversAlerts) August 14, 2025 “Our system detected multiple alerts across ETH, AVAX, ARB, BASE, OP, MANTLE and MATIC networks,” the company ￰6￱ said the attacker moved stolen assets into two addresses and began the laundering process by swapping ￰7￱ 20 minutes later, BtcTurk suspended deposits and withdrawals by claiming there was a “technical issue” affecting its hot ￰8￱ exchange assured customers that local currency transfers and trading were unaffected, but did not confirm the total scale of ￰9￱ hacking resulted in the theft of digital assets, including $48 million worth of Ether, according to Cyvers’ ￰10￱ another incident of the month, dated August 19, a Bitcoin holder lost 783 BTC, worth roughly $91 million, in a social engineering ￰11￱ coincidentally fell on the one-year anniversary of the $240 million Genesis Creditor ￰12￱ security sleuth ZachXBT said the attacker tricked the BTC investor into thinking they were customer support for a hardware wallet provider, which compelled the former to disclose private wallet ￰13￱ stolen Bitcoin was funneled through a Tornado Cash-like privacy tool called Wasabi Wallet, used to obscure the origins of illicit ￰14￱ exploits listed with BetterBank attack Over this past weekend, hackers drained about $5 million from PulseChain-based decentralized lending protocol BetterBank through a complex reward minting and liquidity manipulation ￰15￱ perpetrators manipulated BetterBank’s ESTEEM reward system, which issued tokens when users provided liquidity for ￰16￱ to Web3 Security firm QuillAudits, the attackers created a fake ERC20 token paired with PDAIF, then manipulated trades through wash ￰17￱ ESTEEM rewards helped them convert the artificial supply into real assets, which inadvertently destabilized the pool.

“The attacker laundered stolen funds through swaps on PulseChain DEXes and later bridged about $922K worth of ETH to Ethereum, hiding their trail via Tornado Cash,” QuillAudits ￰18￱ suffers $7 million liquidity manipulation In another attack, hackers targeted Odin. fun, a memecoin launchpad platform, draining 58.2 BTC, worth around $7 million, in under two ￰19￱ data from PeckShield shows the platform’s reserves plunged from 291 BTC to 232.8 BTC during the ￰20￱ exploit involved a liquidity pool manipulation in which attackers paired Bitcoin with a worthless token, ￰21￱ exploiting the pool’s thin liquidity and inflating the token’s value through self-trading, they withdrew large amounts of real BTC at a fake price ￰22￱ co-founder Bob Bodily revealed the platform had faced an attack and admitted the platform’s treasury was not large enough to absorb the ￰23￱ said the team was working on a “concrete plan” to compensate affected users and had initiated a full audit with a security firm.

“We have ideas … we’ll share details as soon as they are finalized,” Bodily posted on X. A Chainalysis report from July mentioned that the many crypto hacks in 2025 may be tied to Bitcoin’s price rise. Don’t just read crypto ￰24￱ ￰25￱ to our newsletter. It's free .