2.5B is a whole lot of money lost, but we have to consider that bybit exchange lost $1.5B of that and Cetus exchange lost $220m, so if these services had invested in their security, then the losses would surely not have been this high. So as people learn to secure their funds from scammers, they should obviously not store it in any third party service, because they could easily lose it there, not your keys, not your coins.
Absolutely agree—Bybit and Cetus alone accounted for nearly 70% of the $2.47B lost in H1 2025. It shows how vulnerable centralized platforms still are.
“Not your keys, not your coins” remains true. But the reality is, many users—retail and institutional—still sacrifice security for ease of use. Maybe it’s time these platforms face tighter regulations and mandatory audits.
One possible solution? Introduce a universal smart contract audit registry—where every DeFi or CeFi protocol must pass third-party audits and list results on-chain before launching. Combine that with mandatory protocol-level insurance pools to cover user losses from verified exploits.
We can’t rely on users alone to protect themselves anymore. The next step is shared accountability—from platforms, developers, and regulators alike.