crypto merchants lost $1.4bn to hackers in the first half of this year, as per analysts. This is more than double the amount of money stolen in the same period in the previous year. Large hacks and exploits make up a majority of the stolen crypto, and private key and seed phrase compromises remain a top attack vector, alongside smart contract exploits and flash loan attacks. The biggest attack so far was on the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin, resulting in the theft of over 4,500 BTC. Though crypto thefts have decreased from 2022's record year, this is still a major problem for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.