Crypto exchange Bitget has paused customer withdrawals following a hack that resulted in the unauthorized transfer of approximately $351.6 million in digital assets. The Seychelles-based company's CEO, Gracy Chen, announced the incident on X, stating that all user funds are safe and that the loss is fully covered by Bitget's User Protection Fund, which holds more than $464 million. The breach involved 19 transfers from the exchange's hot and warm wallet infrastructure, while its cold wallets remained secure.
Preliminary investigations suggest a North Korean hacking group may be responsible, as investigators identified internet protocol addresses linked to VPN services previously used by such groups. The attack pattern also resembled past operations attributed to North Korea. Bitget's security team found that attackers compromised a critical backend wallet system to spoof transfer information and trigger the exchange's authorization process, but private key compromise has been ruled out.
The affected assets included ether, XRP, USDT, USDC, Avalanche, and BNB across multiple networks, including Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Avalanche, BNB Smart Chain, and Arbitrum. While initial on-chain estimates indicated outflows of about $183 million, Bitget clarified that those analyses did not capture all affected blockchains. Deposits and trading continue normally, but withdrawals remain suspended as technical teams repair and reinforce affected systems; Chen anticipates withdrawals to resume within hours or days, not weeks.
Rival exchange Bybit, which experienced a $1.5 billion hack in February 2025, has offered assistance to Bitget, updating its LazarusBounty platform to help trace the stolen funds. This incident marks another significant security breach in the crypto industry, following a year in which hackers stole a combined $2.72 billion from exchanges and protocols.
