Today's Edition
Allan Jacob (Abu Dhabi)
The cryptosphere is scrambling for solutions and scurrying to mitigate the damage to investors after what is being called the biggest hack in the history of the industry when $1.5 billion was pilfered from Bybit, one of the the largest exchanges late on Friday.
Ben Zhou, the CEO of the Dubai-based exchange, said it is doing everything in its power to contain the damage and stressed that investors would be protected. He said systems had returned to normal after the overnight hack.
“12 hr from the worst hack in history. ALL withdraws have been processed. Our withdraw system is now fully back to normal pace,” Zhou said in an X post.
Zhou sought to resassure crypto users their funds were safe and said they could now withdraw without limits while tendering an apology to his over 200,900 followers on X for the breach.
A comprehensive incident report and a security assessment would be done in the coming days, the exchange said. “The real work has just now started,” the Bybit CEO said.
On Friday, Zhou had sounded an alarm on a livestream and said withdrawals would be delayed following the $1.5 billion hack that drained Ethereum-related tokens from the exchange. The exchange had around 4,000 pending tokens at the time of the incident.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has rallied behind Bybit and some lauded the exchange for quickly containing the fallout from the incident.
Bybit’s competitor Bitget transferred 40,000 Ethereums to help Bybit deal with the situation.
Gracy Chen, CEO at Bitget, said in a statement: “At Bitget we strongly believe in supporting the community and everyone contributing towards the growth of crypto. The largest crypto hack in the industry was carried out on Bybit about 12 hours ago. Our systems have blacklisted hacker's wallets. We will block any transactions flowing in from illicit addresses to the exchange once it has been monitored”
She said her security team, and researchers, were tracking these activities. “If we make any significant findings, we will share an analysis of this incident and what industry can do to avoid similar issues.”
She added that these were Bitget’s own funds, which they had sent for the “goodwill of the cryptospace”. She confirmed Bitget’s users’ funds were securely stored on its platform and users could check the Proof of Reserve accordingly.
“Bybit is a respected competitor and partner to us. This loss, even though extremely significant, is roughly about a year’s profit of the exchange. We will continue to monitor the incident, and if Bybit needs more support we’re here to provide,” Chen said.
