According to Lorenzo Valente of ARK Invest, crypto hacks have generated $8.7 billion in losses since January 2026. This amount exceeds the $5.6 billion of projected onchain revenues for the y
According to Lorenzo Valente of ARK Invest, crypto hacks have generated $8.7 billion in losses since January 2026. This amount exceeds the $5.6 billion of projected onchain revenues for the year. The Binance hack accounts for the bulk of this gap, with $6.36 billion in affected assets. Data from DeFiLlama confirm the scale of these losses as of November 11.
Since 2017, crypto hackers have stolen approximately $26.9 billion, compared to $47 billion in onchain revenues generated. This ratio represents 57 cents of losses for every dollar earned by the sector.
Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Assets Research at ARK Invest, published this comparison on November 12 on X. He summarizes the problem with this formula:
Security is the bottleneck.
His projection puts the losses caused by crypto hacks in 2026 at $8.7 billion, compared to an estimated $5.6 billion in onchain revenues. These estimates are based on:
Annual losses would thus exceed onchain revenues for the first time since 2020.
On October 29, an attack on Binance affected approximately $6.34 billion in digital assets. This represents nearly 72% of the recorded losses in 2026. According to the initial Binance report, the crypto hack notably exploited the platform’s operational infrastructure.
The preliminary investigation mentions the potentially compromised computer of a DevOps engineer, which enabled access to an internal service container. The campaign likely began several months earlier. In September, a fake job interview notably helped compromise the IT environment of an engineer.
The FBI officially attributes the attack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, in its October 31 statement.
The crypto exchange Binance distinguishes, however, affected amounts from recovered or replenished funds. As of October 31, the platform stated it had frozen or intercepted $2.85 billion and replenished 98% of the affected assets. It committed to covering losses without passing them on to its users.
Without the Binance incident, crypto losses in 2026 amount to around $2.42 billion. This represents nearly 43% of the $5.6 billion in projected onchain revenues.
The gap between these two indicators largely depends on a single crypto hack. However, this comparison has a limitation: the sources do not specify whether onchain revenues include centralized crypto platforms (CEX) like Binance.
Moreover, the recorded losses are gross amounts. The $2.85 billion frozen or intercepted by Binance do not necessarily constitute definitive losses. Clarification: the 57-cent ratio remains an order of magnitude, not a consolidated accounting balance.
According to DeFiLlama, recorded losses in 2026 reached $8.782 billion as of November 11, across 342 incidents. The platform also tracks changes in total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols.
TVL reportedly fell from $85.9 billion on October 29 to about $77.4 billion on November 12, a decline of nearly 10%. This trend, however, does not demonstrate a causal link with the Binance hack, which targeted a centralized crypto exchange.
Chart showing the evolution of DeFi market TVL. Source: DefiLlama
In its incident analysis, Sentora describes liquidity tensions and withdrawals on some lending markets, without noting bad debts in its own vaults. These movements should be distinguished from those observed after the Kelp DAO exploit of April 2026.
With $8.7 billion in losses, crypto hacks now exceed projected onchain revenues for 2026. For ARK Invest, security is therefore a major barrier to sector growth. The exact scope of revenues, the final accounting of affected funds, and the evolution of losses remain to be monitored.
