Date: 5 February 2026
In 2024, the FBI received 149,686 crypto-fraud complaints, totaling $9.3 billion in losses. This is only the reported figure, and the true figure might be fairly higher. This means that the digital assets industry remains one of the most targeted sectors in cybercrime.
From wallet compromises to multi-chain exploits, the intensity and complexity of these attacks are escalating faster than organizations are responding.
The difference between crypto’s ecosystems and traditional financial systems is that the decentralization of crypto and irreversible transactions does not accommodate any room for error. Once you move an asset, it is gone in minutes. And because of that, incident response in crypto has to be proactive and not reactive.
Since blockchain incidents unfold in split seconds, just a short delay in response can magnify financial and operational damage. This is especially true when the market is super sensitive. For instance, the shifts in bitcoin price usd can influence attacker behavior and the overall value at risk. For example, in the 47th week of 2025, data by Binance states that Bitcoin and Ether dropped about 9% and 11% respectively, reflecting typical higher beta behavior as investors reduced risk following mixed macro signals.
When malicious players exploit vulnerabilities during times of increased trading activity, the consequences can escalate rapidly. This emphasizes the need for companies to build incident response plans that factor in both the technical and market-driven realities of the crypto ecosystem.
The Intense and High-Risk World of Crypto Security
All organizations using crypto understand the risks involved. However, not many are prepared for the magnitude and how extreme things can escalate when things go wrong. When cyber threats find a vulnerability to exploit, all losses unfold on-chain in real time. Unfortunately, there is no pause button and no way to reverse what has been done.
Take, for example, the February 2025 incident on the Dubai-based exchange. According to reports, the Notorious North Korean hacking group, Lazarus Group, is suspected to have carried out the Ethereum attack, which saw a loss of $1.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency. This is the biggest crypto heist that has ever happened.
Before 2025 H1 ended, another major attack happened on the Sui blockchain, where attackers stole around $225 million worth of digital assets from the Cetus protocol. For this, Sui validators were able to recover $162 million of the stolen assets. Even though such high-scale attacks are not very common, it just shows how critical an attack can be on a blockchain.
You see, the difference between traditional finance and crypto ecosystems is quite massive. For traditional finance, you can easily freeze or reverse transactions. However, crypto transactions are decentralized and irreversible. Now, unless the response is done immediately, with discipline, and is informed by deep blockchain visibility, once the funds are gone, they are gone! Often, it all comes down to how well an organization is prepared before the moment happens.
Core Components of an Effective Blockchain Incident Response Plan
When thinking about building an effective incident response plan for your organization, there are a number of things that you should consider. These are the essentials.
Risk Mapping and Targeted Playbooks
An IR plan will begin with comprehensive risk mapping and tailored playbooks that reflect what is happening in the crypto ecosystem. For example, data shows that in the first half of 2025 alone, more than $2.47 billion was lost to cyber threats. This actually surpassed the entire totals for 2024, demonstrating how quickly real-time losses can occur.
Identify critical assets such as:
- Smart contracts
- Multisigs
- Hot wallyes
- Nodes
- Bridges
- Oracles
After identification, ensure that you outline scenario-specific response steps for likely exploit paths. Teams should have ready blueprints for whatever might happen rather than reacting blindly during an attack.
Specialized Blockchain Incident Response Team
For an effective response, you need a dedicated blockchain-focused team that has clearly defined technical, legal and operational responsibilities. For example, the exploit on the Dubai-based exchange was a sophisticated supply-chain attack that leveraged the operational process of the multisig wallet. To deal with such an attack, it would mean having experts who understand smart contract governance, on-chain forensics and cross-chain asset behavior.
Having predetermined authority, e.g., who can initiate multisig freezes or trigger contract pauses, can reduce delays by a huge margin. This is true since rapid decisions are the difference between containing an incident and suffering a massive loss.
Real-Time Monitoring and Blockchain-Specific Containment
Since blockchain transactions are irreversible, rapid detection and containment are quite critical. And in a world where AI is being used everywhere, it can come in handy to help manage situations before they can even get out of hand.
For instance, Binance VP of products, Jeff Li, was quoted as saying, “Binance has been actively exploring and integrating AI technologies across our products and services for some time now. We have been leveraging AI in multiple areas, from assisting with customer queries and enhancing platform and market surveillance to detecting and deterring misconduct and fighting scams.”
You can use AI or other modern anomaly-detection tools to watch millions of transactions and mempool entries in real time. With this, you can comfortably identify suspicious patterns such as unusual withdrawals of gas spikes before they can even hit the tables of human analysts. And just so that you can know that this is critical, the industry is in a climate where there is an average loss that exceeds $7 million per exploit.
For blockchain-powered systems, it is no longer optional to have an effective incident response plan. If you have to survive in the ecosystem, you have to be ready. With billions being lost every year and threat actors becoming more sophisticated, how prepared you are will be the difference between manageable disruption and irreversible devastation.
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