Cryptocurrency theft has grown to $3.2bn in 2021 as the report from China says.

A blockchain data company said this was a 516 per cent increase compared to last year.

The company also said that about $2.2bn of these funds was stolen from decentralised finance platforms.

“Roughly $2.2bn of those funds – 72 per cent of the 2021 total – were stolen from DeFi protocols. The increase in DeFi-related thefts represents the acceleration of a trend we identified in last year’s Crypto Crime report.”

“That alone represented a 335 per cent increase over the total stolen from DeFi platforms in 2019. In 2021, that figure rose another 1,330 per cent. In other words, as DeFi has continued to grow, so too has its issue with stolen funds,” it added.

By the time 2022 is in half, the problem could have grown worse.