Recent news about a withdrawal of approximately $1.5 billion in ETH from the BYBIT exchange caused a swift downturn in the market. As BTC dropped to $97,000, investors who had nurtured hopes for recovery were left disappointed. The initial announcement came from the CEO of the company.
The BYBIT Hack Incident
While hacks of decentralized platforms have become common, they have typically avoided significant catastrophes for months. However, serious news surfaced today from BYBIT, one of the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchanges by volume. The CEO confirmed that a wallet had been hacked, assuring that other cold wallets remained secure. Although there is a potential loss of $1.4 billion, it does not seem substantial enough to lead to BYBIT’s collapse, which might allow the markets to rebound.
The CEO stated:
“Bybit’s ETH multisig cold wallet made a transfer to our hot wallet about an hour ago. This particular transaction appears to have been mixed, as all signers saw a mixed user interface indicating the correct address and the URL came from @safe. However, the signing message was intended to alter the smart contract logic of our ETH cold wallet. As a result, the hacker took control of the specific ETH cold wallet we signed and transferred all ETH to an unidentifiable address. Please be assured that all other cold wallets are safe. All withdrawals are NORMAL. I will keep you updated as further developments arise.”
On-chain analyst anlcnc1 reported:
“On the Bybit side, 401K Ethereum 
$3,094 worth $1.1 billion and $256 million in STETH were transferred to a new wallet, which has begun to liquidate staked Ether on LDO and moved it to another wallet. The sent Ethers are currently standing by in the wallet. Addresses: 0xdd90071d52f20e85c89802e5dc1ec0a7b6475f92 0x47666fab8bd0ac7003bce3f5c3585383f09486e2.”
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“The initially transferred $1 billion in 401K Ether is being distributed to new wallets at $27 million each. Each wallet will receive $10K.”
