$ETH
The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, Ben Zhou, has confirmed on X that the company has been hacked. Two hours ago, the X account of Whale Alert highlighted a transfer of more than 401,000 ETH worth $1.1 billion. The hacker transferred the funds to a fresh wallet address, but has since moved the funds to more than 40 other wallets.
Mr Zhou said that only one ETH cold wallet was compromised, and that all other wallets are intact and withdrawals continue as normal. The implication is that Bybit has more than $1 billion in equity. He followed up by saying “Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed, we can cover the loss.”
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) chimed in that the exchange should consider pausing withdrawals as a precaution.
While the hacker might have successfully drained the wallet, it remains to be seen whether they can do much with the funds.
Given that blockchains are public, Etherscan, the popular explorer, marked the wallet addresses as a ‘Bybit exploiter’. The transfers out of the initial exploiter address were in units of ETH 10,000 or $27 million, with each new wallet address also flagged.
Apart from the first wallet which was drained, most of the action was in two wallets (1 2), with the vast majority of funds still sitting in amounts of ETH 10,000 in 40 or so wallets.
Others have pegged the hack figure at $1.4 billion. However, the CEO confirmed the theft of ETH 401,000 or around $1.1 billion at a price of $2,800.