Bitget Hacked for $352 Million, Freezes Withdrawals
Bitget lost about $352 million to a backend exploit, froze withdrawals, and blamed a North Korea-style crew. A $464 million fund reportedly covers the loss.
The breach
Bitget says it spotted unauthorized transactions on Thursday and pulled the plug on withdrawals within hours. The tally so far: roughly $351.6 million gone. CEO Gracy Chen says the attackers got into a backend system running the exchange's own wallet service and tampered with transfer data to trigger the signing process. Crucially, no private keys from the hot, warm or cold wallets were taken — this was a hit on the plumbing, not the cryptography.
The Lazarus fingerprint
Chen points to a familiar signature: the pattern looks like prior North Korean operations, Lazarus chief among them. An inside job looks unlikely, she says, and part of the stolen funds has already been clawed back — though Bitget won't put a number on it. A full post-mortem is promised within 24 hours. If the attribution holds, Bitget joins an expensive club: state-linked crews have looted exchanges and bridges for billions this cycle.
Why the damage is contained
This is not FTX. There is no solvency hole here. Bitget says it will absorb the loss in full through its User Protection Fund, which it pegs at more than $464 million — comfortably above the theft. Customer balances are, on paper, whole. The real pressure point is the withdrawal freeze. As long as it holds, liquidity is trapped, and every hour without clean disclosure feeds the urge to run for the exit once the gates reopen.
The trade
Price action is calm so far — Bitcoin is holding its range while long-end yields grind higher. But the read-through runs deeper. A backend exploit with no keys stolen tells you the attack surface has moved off key management and onto the infrastructure around it. For centralized venues that means a fresh trust discount: exchange tokens should trade soft near-term, and a slice of balances will migrate back to self-custody, as it always does after a marquee hack. If you are parked on Bitget, wait for withdrawals to reopen and treat the promised report as the real test — a backstop is only as good as its execution.