The biggest crypto heists in history

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As the crypto market continues to grow, the number of scams within the space have also risen. It is estimated that an equivalent of USD 4 billion has been syphoned off from innocent investors till date. What’s really astounding is the sheer scale of these scams, some of which run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

To paint a clearer picture of the enormity of these scams, we’ve put together a list of the 5 biggest crypto heists in history with in-depth details on each of them.MT GoxThe hack on Japanese exchange, MT Gox, is one of the earliest and most substantial heists in crypto history. It is also considered to be the biggest Bitcoin heist ever. The distinguishing factor of the MT Gox heist is that it wasn’t a one-time event.

Instead, the hackers siphoned bitcoins in instalments from 2011 to 2014, resulting in an overall theft of nearly 850,000 bitcoins.Experts determined that it was an underlying bug, known as transaction malleability, that facilitated the hack. Thanks to this bug, the hackers were able to steal bitcoins directly from wallets on the exchange and the loot was valued at around USD 470 million.Also Read | Japan urges crypto exchanges to act in line with sanctions against RussiaPoly NetworkThis is the biggest crypto hack in history and also one of the most recent ones. In August 2021, a hacker exploited vulnerabilities in the Poly Network, a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform, syphoning off roughly USD 600 million in the process.But it was not all doom for the DeFi platform.

This is because the hacker, known as "Mr. White Hat", did not vanish with his ill-gotten gains. Instead, in a strange turn of events, he started a dialogue with the Poly Network, which resulted in the hacker giving back most of