Well, darlings, just when the crypto world was popping the champagne over a little victory in the Coinbase-SEC lawsuit on February 21, along comes Bybit, the Dubai darling of exchanges, to steal the limelight with the largest security breach in crypto history. Bravo! 👏
Our beloved exchange, the second-largest by trading volume, has lost a staggering $1.5 billion in staked Ether (ETH) and other ERC-20 coins. Quite the party trick, wouldn’t you say? 🎉
This little escapade has outdone the previous record, more than doubling the $611 million Poly Network attack of 2021 and the at least $600 million Ronin bridge exploit of 2022. Talk about raising the stakes! 🎲
According to the ever-so-serious Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, this breach might not just be the largest crypto heist ever, but potentially the biggest single theft of any kind. How delightful! “It’s also potentially the largest single theft of any kind, ever.”
But wait, the plot thickens! Onchain analyst ZachXBT and Arkham Intelligence have fingered North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the culprits behind this grand theft. Tied to the government, they’re thought to be behind some of the world’s most audacious cyber heists. How charming! 🕵️♂️
Bybit assets tumble by $5.3 billion in the aftermath
At precisely 3:53 pm UTC on February 21, Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou confirmed the breach, reporting that a hacker had taken control of an ETH cold wallet and “transferred all ETH in the cold wallet” to an “unidentified address.” How very mysterious! 🕵️♀️
Etherscan revealed that 401,346.77 ETH was whisked away from Bybit’s cold wallet to the exploiter’s wallet at 2:16 am UTC on the same day. Quite the heist, indeed!
In a flurry of posts on X, Zhou assured everyone that “Bybit Hot wallet, Warm wallet and all other cold wallets are fine. The only cold wallet that was hacked was ETH cold wallet. ALL withdrawals are NORMAL.” How reassuring! 😌
Indeed, Bybit has processed all withdrawals, but alas, the value of their total assets has plummeted by over $5.3 billion, according to DefiLlama data — this includes the $1.4 billion in stolen assets. Oops! 😬
“Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of the client’s assets are 1 to 1 backed — we can cover the loss,” Zhou stated in a later post. How noble! 🦸♂️
He also mentioned on an X livestream that Bybit had taken out bridge loans with partners and secured about 80% of the funding needed to cover the losses. Quite the financial acrobatics! 🤹♂️
Meanwhile, ETH took a little tumble, dropping 6.7% during the day, but by 1:00 am UTC, it had mostly recovered. Only down 2% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. A true comeback story! 📈
Industry reacts to Bybit hack: Scale is ‘staggering’
“Today’s hack is the biggest ever,” declared Maddie Kennedy, vice president of communications at Chainalysis, to CryptoMoon, noting it accounts for “more than half of the cumulative funds stolen last year.” How delightful for the hackers! 😏
Is this a new trend? “Trends on hacks are very outlier-driven,” she noted. It may be hard to tell at this point. How insightful! 🧐
Not everyone was shocked, however.
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2025-02-22 20:34