Crypto hack losses equal 57 cents per $1 earned onchain: Ark’s Valente

Hackers stole 57 cents for every $1 earned onchain by blockchain protocols since 2017, according to Lorenzo Valente, director of digital asset research at ARK Investment Management.

“Security is the bottleneck,” wrote Valente in a Thursday X post, sharing a chart showing that $8.7 billion lost to crypto hacks year to date had already surpassed the $5.6 billion in estimated annual onchain revenue for 2026.

Since 2017, the crypto industry has lost about $26.9 billion to hacks and earned $47 billion in total onchain revenue, he added.

The recent $6.3 billion stolen in the Binance hack alone exceeded Valente’s estimate for full-year 2026 onchain revenue. Value lost to hacks is on track to exceed onchain revenue by year-end for the first time since 2020.

The crypto industry saw a string of high-value hacks this year, including September’s $387 million Bitget hack and the $320 million Liquid Network exploit, as well as April’s $295 million Drift Protocol exploit.

The mounting security exploits are weighing on the institutional appetite for DeFi. In an April research note, JPMorgan analysts identified bridge security as a long-standing challenge for the industry.

Total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) has fallen nearly 10% since the Binance exploit, from $85.9 billion on Oct. 29 to $77.4 billion on Thursday, according to DefiLlama.