Blockaid: Hackers Still Hold $287M in Stolen Crypto That Can’t Be Frozen

The headline number matters less than the recovery gap it exposes: with under 1% of stolen funds returned to victims, the industry's freeze-and-return playbook is failing at scale. The 17-minute median laundering window is the real story — it shows how automated, pre-planned the exit is, which shifts the burden from post-hoc tracing toward pre-breach prevention and faster detection. This affects exchanges, custodians and protocols holding user assets far more than traders. The open question is whether security spending and incident response keep pace with the speed attackers now demonstrate.