Investors withdrew over 4,000 bitcoins worth over $334 million at today’s prices in one hour after hacked Bitget resumed customer withdrawals, the company’s CEO has said.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen told Bloomberg Television Tuesday that withdrawals from the exchange had since stabilized following the immediate bitcoin transactions.
Hackers last week made away with $388 million in crypto after targeting the Victoria, Seychelles-based exchange’s hot wallets.
“The withdrawals actually stabilized a lot today,” Chen said. “Those hundreds of millions [in bitcoin withdrawals] actually most of them happen on the first hour of the withdrawal restart.”
In a Monday X post, Chen said that 9,585 orders of 4,098 bitcoins were processed. The exchange is allowing customers to withdraw funds in phases.
Bitget froze withdrawals after blockchain experts flagged that money was leaving the exchange. Bitget later said the attack method in the incident was “highly consistent with known patterns of North Korean hacker organizations.”
Chen said that no cold storage funds were touched but rather attackers had “exploited vulnerabilities from third-party products to steal internal credentials, then used those credentials to send fraudulent withdrawal commands that bypassed our risk controls.”
She added that the company was using its own money to top up its protection fund after it dropped in size. Bloomberg reported that it was below $200 million after standing at $464 million before the hack.
Bitget said that it was the first “security incident of this nature in eight years.”
“The incident remains contained, and no further unauthorized transfers are possible,” the exchange noted.
Bitget is the sixth biggest by trading volume, according to CoinGecko, processing in the past 24 hours $811 million in transactions. The exchange’s customers are mostly based in Asia.
Attackers linked to North Korea’s government have long targeted crypto exchanges and are some of the most sophisticated cyber criminals out there.
