Bitget Provides Vital Support to Bybit Following Major Hack
In a significant move within the cryptocurrency industry, the exchange platform Bitget has transferred 40,000 ether (ETH), valued at approximately $105 million, to its peer, Bybit. This transfer comes in the wake of a devastating hack that saw Bybit lose more than a billion dollars worth of assets. The funds sent by Bitget are sourced entirely from its own reserves, ensuring that user deposits remain safe and secure on the platform. Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, reassured customers that their funds are well-protected and can be verified through the exchange’s proof of reserves. She expressed a commitment to providing further assistance if necessary.
“At Bitget, we firmly believe in supporting the community and everyone who contributes to the growth of cryptocurrency,” Chen noted in a message shared with CoinDesk.
The hack, attributed to a suspected North Korean entity, saw approximately $1.4 billion in ether drained from Bybit on a Friday. This incident triggered an extraordinary influx of withdrawal requests from users, yet Bybit successfully processed 99% of these requests, effectively undergoing a significant market stress test. Following the breach, part of the stolen funds began to move shortly after, with over 5,000 ETH routed through eXch mixer—a service designed to obscure wallet addresses—before being sent to the bridge protocol ChainFlip where the assets were converted into bitcoin (BTC).
In a post on X, ChainFlip explained that it was unable to prevent the movement of funds because it operates as a fully decentralized application reliant on automated smart contracts. However, they indicated that they had “turned off some frontend services to stop the flow.”
In response to the situation, Bitget has blacklisted wallets associated with the hacker responsible for the significant loss of ether from Bybit. Chen emphasized, “We will block any transactions originating from illicit addresses to our exchange once they are monitored. Our dedicated team of security experts and researchers is actively tracking these activities.”
Despite the chaos caused by the hack, Bybit has managed to process over 350,000 withdrawal requests and has since restored normal withdrawal operations, as confirmed in a post on X.
