Crypto Has Lost 57 Cents to Hackers for Every Dollar Earned: ARK
Crypto projects have lost $26.9 billion to hackers since 2017, which is 57 cents stolen for every dollar earned, according to ARK Invest.
On-chain revenue for the crypto sector has been a costly weakness, with $47 billion earned and $26.9 billion lost to hackers since 2017.
This ratio of 57 cents stolen per dollar earned was calculated by ARK Invest's director of research, Lorenzo Valente, who compared revenue data from Token Terminal with hack losses tracked by DefiLlama.
The trend of revenue outpacing theft was the norm from 2021 to 2025, but the Binance incident reversed it, making 2026 the worst year on record.
2026 Binance hack erases revenue
By the end of October 2026, hackers had stolen $8.7 billion, a figure that has already wiped out the estimated $5.6 billion in on-chain revenue for the year.
The bulk of this amount, $6.3 billion, came from the Binance hack, which was the largest theft in the industry's history.
ARK Invest's analysis showed that while revenue had been higher than theft in 2025, with $8.9 billion earned versus $2.7 billion stolen, the Binance breach has caused a dramatic reversal.
Security is the bottleneck.
Binance response and attribution
Binance initially stated that an attacker may have used a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals.
Co-CEO Richard Teng later clarified that the attack was not a single 'one-click' action, noting that Binance had found 'additional points of breach'.
The exchange has since frozen about $3 billion of the stolen funds on-chain, with blockchain partners including Tether and Circle assisting in the effort.
Binance has promised to make whole those affected, absorbing the full financial impact using its SAFU funds, corporate treasury, and related reserves.
Withdrawals, which were temporarily halted, resumed in phases from November 1.
The FBI, alongside several blockchain security firms, has claimed that the group TraderTraitor, allegedly linked to the North Korean regime, was behind the hack.
North Korea has distanced itself from the incident, accusing the United States of political provocation and suggesting that the US would benefit most if the funds were recovered.
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