2026 Just Set a New Record for Crypto Theft in a Single Month. September Beat April.
The year's two worst months for hacks are now on the board, and the biggest losses aren't coming from where most people look.
September: Bitget confirmed about $351.6 million was taken from its hot and warm wallets on September 24. Add the roughly $320 million Liquid Network incident, whose attackers claimed to be "white hat" hackers, and CryptoSlate calculates September's gross reported losses at over $684 million. That passes April's $646.9 million, which came mostly from the KelpDAO (about $292 million) and Drift (about $280-295 million) attacks.
The first half of the year, per one report: 207 incidents and $972 million in losses, with about $643 million of stolen funds linked to North Korea-related groups.
$ETH was the most attacked chain.
The pattern underneath the totals:
🔑 Smart contract bugs were the most common attack vector, but private key compromises and infrastructure breaches caused many of the largest losses
🌉 Cross-chain bridges took heavy hits, with $351 million lost in Q2 alone
📉 Q2 had a record number of incidents, yet analysts say lower liquidity means each one takes less
This week added another entry: Ledger is investigating reports of roughly $86 million drained from wallets sold through a Southeast Asian reseller, which is still unconfirmed.
On Bitget's side, the exchange says its $464 million protection fund covers the loss, though it hasn't disclosed how attackers got in.
The common thread: the costly failures are usually the unglamorous ones, like keys, third-party systems, and supply chains, not clever code exploits.
When you think about risk, do you worry more about smart contract bugs or about the people and infrastructure around them? 👇
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