Share this article
$302 Million Lost to Crypto Scams, Hacks, and Exploits in May: CertiK
The largest attack was the $225 million exploit of the Cetus Protocol.
Updated Jun 2, 2025, 3:42 p.m. Published Jun 2, 2025, 2:08 p.m.
What to know:
- Cryptocurrency investors suffered losses exceeding $300 million due to scams, hacks, and exploits, with code vulnerabilities being the primary cause.
- Code-related vulnerabilities accounted for $229 million of the losses—a staggering 4,483% increase from April.
- The largest exploit was the $225 million Cetus Protocol hack, which led to Sui controversially halting its blockchain.
Cryptocurrency investors lost more than $300 million to scams, hacks and exploits in May, according to blockchain security firm CertiK.
The majority of those losses were related to code vulnerability exploits, which accounted for $229 million -- a 4,483% rise on April.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Phishing, which involves an attacker stealing a user's trading account or wallet credentials, accounted for $47 million of losses while private key compromise and price manipulation were behind $11.6 million and $1 million of losses respectively.
“Our research revealed an interesting anomaly in May: a significant increase in losses from code vulnerabilities, which represented a majority of exploited funds”, said CertiK senior blockchain security researcher Natalie Newson.
"It is important to point out that over the fast few years, losses from code vulnerabilities have decreased significantly. In 2024 $173 million was lost to code vulnerabilities, compared with $1.3 billion in 2021."
The largest incident of all in was the Cetus Protocol exploit that prompted Sui to controversially pause the blockchain as attackers made off with $225 million.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Pye Finance Raises $5M Seed Round Led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures
The platform aims to make locked Solana staking positions tradable via an onchain marketplace.
What to know:
- Pye Finance raised a $5 million seed round led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Solana Labs, Nascent and Gemini.
- The startup is building an onchain marketplace on Solana for time-locked staking positions that can be traded.
- Pye says the product targets Solana’s large pool of staked SOL, worth roughly $75 billion, and aims to give validators and stakers more flexibility over terms and reward flows.
Top Stories
