The CEO of Immunefi, Mitchell Amador, says that most crypto projects don’t bounce back after big hacks almost 80% of them, in fact.
Amador says those initial hours after a hack can be brutal. If a project doesn’t have a solid plan, teams can get bogged down in disagreement and not fully realize how bad things are. This slows things down and leads to chaotic decisions, which can just make things worse.
He mentioned some projects won’t pause their smart contracts because they’re worried about how it looks to the public. Plus, they often stop talking to their users, which usually freaks people out even more.
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Amador says it’s not just the stolen money that hurts these projects, but how operations fall apart and how trust is broken during the response.
Trust Erosion Is Becoming Crypto’s Biggest Risk
Alex Katz, CEO of Kerberus, a Web3 security company, agrees that trust is becoming a major problem in crypto. Even if a hack gets fixed, the damage is often done. Katz says that usually, a big hack is a death knell – people leave, money disappears, and the project’s reputation is toast.
Katz added that crypto losses are happening differently now; smart contract bugs used to be the main issue, but now it’s often human error and operational slip-ups. He says people are the weak link in crypto security, with most losses happening when we click on the wrong thing, visit fake sites, or accidentally show our private keys.
Earlier in the month, someone lost over $282 million in Bitcoin and Litecoin because they fell for a social engineering scam. The attacker pretended to be Trezor support and tricked the victim into giving up their hardware wallet recovery phrase.
Crypto hacks shot up in 2025, leading to about $3.4 billion in losses the highest since 2022. Just three attacks made up almost 70% of that amount, including the $1.4 billion Bybit hack, according to industry data.
