What the analyst measured
In a November 11 post, Valente gave two cumulative figures starting in 2017: $26.9 billion lost to hacks and $47 billion earned onchain. Dividing the first estimate by the second produces roughly 0.57. In a follow-up post he named Blockworks and DefiLlama as his data sources. The ratio is his comparison of their datasets, not a single standardized metric jointly published by those platforms.
Onchain revenue describes income attributable to networks and protocols from blockchain activity. It is not the total revenue of centralized exchanges, custodians and every other crypto business. A hack database can cover a broader range of targets, including exchanges. The 57-cent figure therefore puts the scale of theft alongside a selected revenue base. It is not an industry loss rate or the share stolen from each dollar actually received by a business.
Why one 2026 breach matters so much
Valente singled out the October Binance hack, which he valued at $6.36 billion. On his figures, that one incident exceeded the onchain revenue counted for 2026. DefiLlama's public hack database also ranks Binance as the year's largest incident. Its loss figures and annual total can change as valuations, classifications and recovery information are updated.
The breach of a centralized exchange matters directly to customer security, but it also exposes a limitation of the ratio: the exchange's stolen assets enter the numerator while its ordinary business revenue need not enter the onchain denominator. A single extreme event can move the cumulative comparison substantially. The result does not imply that every protocol loses a similar share of its revenue.
Gross theft is not final net loss
Hack figures usually record the value taken when an attack happens or is discovered. Some assets may later be frozen or recovered, while an operator may reimburse customers from its own reserves. Those outcomes are distinct. Recovery can reduce the eventual loss; reimbursement shifts the cost from users to the company but does not erase the security breach.
Public trackers also differ in which incidents they include, how they value tokens in dollars and when they update records. The $26.9 billion total and 57-cent ratio are best read as Valente's dated estimate, not permanent statistics. A comparison with a later report requires checking the period, incident coverage, revenue definition and treatment of recovered funds again.
What users can take from the comparison
The analysis does not say that any crypto transaction loses 57% of its value. It illustrates concentrated operational risk: compromised keys or hot-wallet access at a large intermediary can cause losses that dwarf the income of many projects. When assessing a service, fees are only one consideration alongside custody design, withdrawal limits, separation of duties, audits and incident response.
Users should assess the obligations and safeguards of a specific provider rather than applying this industry-level ratio to a personal wallet or transaction. Valente's post is a warning about the possible scale of an operational failure. It does not measure the likelihood of a breach at any one platform, establish the size of its reserves or guarantee repayment to an individual customer.
