Following a recent major hack, Bybit exchange is facing a crisis as over $5.5 billion capital has been withdrawn. The hackers, believed to be from the Lazarus group in North Korea, stole around $1.5 billion from Bybit’s cold Ethereum wallets. This theft led to a decrease in tracked assets from $16.9 billion to $11.2 billion in wallets associated with the exchange. Ben Zhou, Bybit’s CEO, immediately called his team to process withdrawals and address user inquiries post-hack. He revealed that the hackers stole about 70% of users’ Ethereum, but according to Zhou’s reports, Ethereum did not have the highest withdrawals; most withdrawals from the exchange were in stablecoins. Meanwhile, Bybit needed loans to facilitate withdrawals and quickly took action to resolve the issue. Concurrently, the decentralized asset storage protocol Safe temporarily disabled its smart wallet capabilities to ensure Bybit’s platform security. While Bybit was trying to withdraw $3 billion in stablecoins from Safe, withdrawal requests rapidly increased. Although Bybit managed to transfer $3 billion in stablecoins, it faced a bank run crisis where about 50% of all assets in the exchange were involved. Zhou stated that since the incident, Bybit has moved a significant amount of funds from Safe’s cold wallets and is designing a new system to replace them. Currently, the proposal for an Ethereum blockchain rollback suggested by some industry players is still under review. Zhou announced that his team is in contact with Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation to find solutions for asset recovery. Bybit has also launched a program to recover the stolen funds, considering 10% of the recovered amounts as rewards, which could reach up to $140 million upon complete success. Meanwhile, Tether has frozen 181,000 USDT related to this hack and stated they will continue monitoring suspicious transactions. Visit the digital currency price page to view live prices of all tokens and cryptocurrencies.
