Over US$100 Million NFT Stolen Throughout 2022

The estimated value of the stolen digital collection of US$100 million is only 0.65 percent of the total trading volume of the NFT market during the same period, reported by The Block.

Between July 2021 and July 2022, there was a trade of US$15.3 billion in these assets.BAYC is the most common case of digital collection theft, according to Elliptic's report. The company's analysis found 167 BAYC stolen with a value of US $ 43.6 million.

Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) and Azuki were the second and third most targeted NFTs, with total losses of US$14.5 million and US$3.9 million, respectively.The most expensive digital collection stolen occurred in May 2022 with a value of US $ 24 million. The month with the highest number of NFT thefts occurred in July 2022 with a total of 4,600 assets. The average loss reached US $ 300 thousand per theft that occurred.

Hacking of social media sites, notably the non-fungible token project's Discord servers, skyrocketed in 2022. Theft through such hacks accounted for 23 percent of the total digital collection stolen this year.Elliptic explained, the proliferation of malware designed to penetrate two factor authentication (2FA) is one of the causes that support the occurrence of NFT theft.

In addition to the theft of digital collections, the laundering of illegal funds amounting to US$8 million has been carried out through NFT-based platforms since 2017.Such services are increasingly threatened by sanctioned entities as well as state-level hacking. For example, the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group hacked Ronin Bridge belonging to crypto gaming company Axie Infinity and stole US$540 million in funds.

Digital assets of US$160,000 originating from sanctioned entities were used to purchase non-fungible tokens.Elliptic data shows that the crypto market slump that started in May after the failure of the Terra ecosystem (LUNA) did not discourage thieves.