It appears that the amount of Bitcoin stolen in 2020 fell sharply compared with the number of tokens stolen in 2019. That is the finding Jameson Lopp shared on Twitter. Casa’s co-founder and CTO analyzed extensive data on Bitcoin thefts dating back to 2011.
4,473 BTC stolen in 2020 versus 54,570 BTC in 2019
By aggregating publicly disclosed data from multiple Bitcoin thefts, Casa’s CTO observed that the number of Bitcoins stolen in 2020 dropped more than 92% compared with 2019 (54,570 in 2019 vs. 4,473 in 2020).
The chart below shows the percentage of Bitcoin’s circulating supply declared stolen. The decline looks even more dramatic when comparing 2020 to 2014, a year that saw many high-profile BTC hacks totaling 678,262 BTC. Between those two years, the fall is nearly 100%.
As Bitcoin reaches new highs, will stolen token totals hit new lows in 2021?
Bitcoin started 2021 strongly. At the time of writing, the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization had pulled back slightly after reaching a new record above $37,800.
With BTC prices hitting fresh highs, might the total number of Bitcoins stolen reach new lows this year? Network security appears to be strengthening, at least according to Jameson Lopp’s assessment.
“Bitcoin security seems to be improving! As far as I can tell, only 4,366 BTC were stolen in the major publicly disclosed thefts in 2020. That’s a 92% decline versus 2019 and represents a record low of just 0.02% of the total token supply,” Jameson Lopp wrote on Twitter.