From Ronin to Mt.Gox: These are crypto's biggest hacks and heists since Bitcoin was created in 2008

euronews.com:

Hackers stole cryptocurrency worth almost $615 million (€557 million) from a blockchain project linked to the popular online game Axie Infinity it was announced this week, the latest in a series of high-profile cyberheists to hit the digital asset sector in recent years.

Ronin, a network that allows the transfer of crypto coins across different blockchains, said on Tuesday that hackers stole on March 23 some 173,600 Ether tokens and 25.5 million USD Coin tokens.

At the time of the announcement, the loot was worth around $615 million (€557 million) - and, due to a change in the value of the tokens, some $540 million (€449 million) at the time of the hack - making the theft one of the largest on record.

Here are some of the other major thefts to have plagued the crypto sector since Bitcoin - the largest and original cryptocurrency - was born in 2008.

Hackers stole around $610 million (€552 million) in August 2021 from Poly Network, a platform that facilitates peer-to-peer token transactions. The hackers behind the heist later returned nearly all of the stolen funds.

The hack underscored vulnerabilities in the burgeoning decentralised finance - or DeFi - sector, where users lend, borrow and save in digital tokens, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges.

In January 2018, hackers stole cryptocurrency then worth around $530 million (€480 million) from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck. The thieves attacked one of Coincheck's "hot wallets" - a digital folder stored online - to drain the funds, drawing attention to security at exchanges.

The hack raised questions in Japan about regulation of the digital asset market. South Korea's intelligence agency said at the time that a North Korean hacking group