Crypto Whale Loses $26M in Second Hack; Combined Total Tops $50M

The TLBL case follows a broader surge in crypto theft this year. Hackers stole $1.1 billion across 212 attacks in the first half of 2026 alone, according to an Aug. 1 report from Blockaid. Private key misuse accounted for roughly $790 million of that – nearly 75 percent of all stolen value. Monthly incidents climbed from 18 in January to 57 in June.

Security data from Nominis pegged cumulative losses at roughly $1.65 billion through July 2026. April was the heaviest month, driven by hacks at Kelp DAO and Drift Protocol that together lost roughly $578 million. July ranked second at $242 million, with $116 million of that coming from a firmware vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets made by Coinkite.

Lookonchain also flagged a separate case this week of address poisoning, where a victim lost $100,000 by copying a fake address from past transaction history without verifying it. Both attack vectors – private key theft and address spoofing – share a target: the wallet interface itself, which remains the most exploited point in the custody chain.