May 2025 Crypto Heists Top $244M—But Recovery Teams Freeze $157M in Dramatic Counterstrike

Crypto’s wild west just got a sheriff—or at least a temporarily effective bounty hunter. Hackers looted $244 million in digital assets last month, but white-hats and exchanges clawed back $157 million in frozen funds. Not bad for an industry that still can’t decide if regulation is tyranny or salvation.

Behind the numbers: While the headline figure stings, the rapid recovery efforts signal maturing defenses. Exchanges now freeze stolen funds faster than a Wall Street bank blocks your overdraft request.

The irony? This ‘security win’ still leaves $87 million vaporized—enough to make even a crypto bull wince. Maybe next month we’ll invent an unhackable blockchain. Or maybe we’ll just keep writing checks to auditors while pretending decentralization means never having to say you’re sorry.

• The total amount of crypto losses from hacks in May 2025 reached $244 million across 20 major incidents, with $157 million successfully recovered and a 39.29% drop from April. 
• The largest breach occurred on Cetus DEX, resulting in $223 million stolen through an MSB flaw. 

Crypto fraud has continued to see a high rise, with reports detailing that about $244 million was lost in May 2025 due to hacks, with nearly 20 major incidents. Despite the high amount of losses, there was a significant recovery effort, with $157 million in stolen funds successfully frozen or reclaimed. 

The partial recovery is very encouraging and goes to show that even though the amount of cyberattack in the crypto industry is high, so also is the effectiveness of coordinated response growing.

According to a post shared by PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, the crypto space saw about 20 major breaches in May 2025, leading to total losses of $244.1 million. The total amount of hacks is about a 39.29% drop compared to the statistics of April. The decrease is likely due to stronger security steps being taken across different blockchain companies. Notably, the largest single exploit accounted for nearly 90% of the total amount stolen during the month. 

Cetus and Other Crypto Hacks that Happened in May 2025

According to the details, the biggest crypto hack in May happened on the Cetus decentralized exchange. The breach was carried out on the 22nd of May and led to a loss of around $223 million in user funds. The breach was first flagged by a Web3 researcher, COMDARE3, who posted that the Sui-based platform was under threat.

According to details, the exploit was due to a flaw in the “most significant bits” (MSB) check. This weakness in the system allowed the attackers to change key liquidity settings and create huge positions with very little input, causing the hackers to drain the token pools.

In response, Cetus and its parent platform, sui Network, quickly froze $157 million of the stolen assets, making up roughly 71% of the total. The second-largest crypto hack involved Cork Protocol, where roughly $12 million was stolen by exploiting a smart contract weakness. The details of the hack also shared that the hacker took 3,761 Wrapped Staked Ether (wstETH) and later swapped it for regular Ethereum.

Other major breaches in May included a DPRK-linked attack worth $5.2 million, an MBU token exploit of $2.2 million, and a $1.2 million loss from MapleStory Universe.

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