Incident All ledgers
Zaif: $60.0m
Zaif lost $60.0m on 14 September 2018. Ranked 63rd of 1,272 crypto failures, with method, returned funds and comparable incidents.
- Date
- 14 September 2018
- Lost
- $60.0m
- Returned or repaid
- None recorded
- Target
- CEX
- Category
- Key Compromise
- Method
- Hot Wallet Key Compromised
- Chains
- Bitcoin
In September 2018, attackers obtained private keys to Japanese exchange Zaif's hot wallets and took about 5,966 BTC plus Bitcoin Cash and MonaCoin, worth roughly 6.7 billion yen (~$60 million). The theft went unnoticed for three days.
Against the ledger
- It ranks 63rd of the 1,272 incidents with a known loss, and 4th in 2018.
- It accounts for 99.6% of the $60.3m in known losses in September 2018.
- 153 incidents in the ledger are classified as Key Compromise, for $8.96bn in total. This one is 0.7% of that.
- The ledger records no returned funds.
Closest in size by the same method
| Date | Target | Lost | Type | Method | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jun 2021 | StakeHound / Fireblocks | $72.0m | DeFi Protocol | Key Brute Forced | — |
| 02 Aug 2016 | Bitfinex | $72.0m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 26 Jul 2023 | AlphaPo | $60.0m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 12 Sept 2023 | CoinEx | $55.0m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 22 Jun 2024 | BtcTurk | $54.0m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
All failures in 2018 · The failures ledger
Amounts are DefiLlama’s estimates and can change as incidents are revalued. Its returned figure can include money a company repaid itself, not only funds recovered from attackers. Source: DefiLlama.
Cite this Bitminer.io, “Zaif, failures ledger”, data to 2 November 2026, https://bitminer.io/ledger/incident/zaif-2018-09-14/. How this is built