According to a recent report from the American cyber security firm CipherTrace, the losses caused by the hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges globally have reached almost $1 billion so far this year. This number is already 250% higher than the total losses suffered due cryptocurrency exchanges being hacked in 2017.

Rise in Hack Attacks

CipherTrace released its Anti-Money Laundering Report for the third quarter of 2018, which analyzes money laundering as well as criminal activities in the cryptocurrency market. This report showed that for the year so far, crypto exchanges have suffered losses to the tune of $927 million, vis-à-vis $266 million for the entire year last year.

According to this report, hacks with smaller amounts being stolen, ranging from $20 million to $60 million are also on the rise this year. Just for the third quarter alone, these types of thefts have amounted to $173 million in losses for crypto exchanges across the globe.

The Chief Executive of CipherTrace, Dave Jevans stated in an interview that government authorities are still a few years behind these hackers since only a few countries across the globe have actually implemented anti-money laundering laws. He is also chairman of the organization called Anti-Phishing Working Group, whose purpose is to assist in solving cyber-crimes across the globe.

The firm’s report also revealed that some of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, which were based in countries with weak or non-existent anti-money laundering laws, have been used to launder about $2.5 billion worth of BTC for the last decade.

CipherTrace analyzed data from the top 20 global cryptocurrency exchanges for this report, however, did not name the exchanges.

In estimating the $2.5 billion amount, the cyber security firm assess around 350 million transactions from these 20 crypto exchanges and traced about 100 million to counter parties. Then, the firm cross-reference those data points with its own database on cyber-criminal activities.

Jevans stated that all exchanges got money-laundered funds and there wasn’t much that could be done to stop that.

Actual Figures Higher Than Reported

Jevans also stated that there was a likelihood that the actual amount of losses that cryptocurrency exchanges have faced so far this year are actually 50% higher than were traced. He gave the example that his company was aware of over $60 million worth of cryptocurrency being stolen from exchanges but not being reported.

He said the reason for this was that the authorities usually learned about the crimes after they actually took place. Therefore, there was no way to know about them in real-time. He said it wasn’t possible to know about all criminal activities 100% of the time.