Bitget CEO ‘not very optimistic’ on recovering funds from $388M breach
The CEO of crypto exchange Bitget isn’t sure that the company can fully freeze or recover all the assets compromised in a security breach last week that resulted in the loss of $388 million in crypto.
Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction released Tuesday, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said she was looking at the February 2025 hack of crypto exchange Bybit as a “good reference point” for Thursday’s breach. Hackers stole about $1.5 billion worth of Ether (ETH) from Bybit, and the company reported only freezing and recovering a combined $80 million.
“I’m actually not very optimistic because after a year or so of Bybit’s hack, they’ve only [been able to freeze] about 3.5% of the total stolen funds,” said Chen. “That’s only the freezing. It’s not about recovery yet.”
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen (left) speaking to Cointelegraph’s Ciaran Lyons (right). Source: Cointelegraph
Bitget launched a bounty program in response to the incident, offering 5% of funds frozen and 5% for those recovered. Some companies have already stepped up to try to mitigate user losses.
The team behind NEAR Intents reported on Monday that it had blocked more than $50 million in assets tied to the attack and froze about $500,000. Chen also confirmed that stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle blacklisted a wallet linked to the exploit, freezing $318,013 in USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC).
The security breach is one of the largest to impact the crypto industry in 2026, following a $320 million exploit of the Liquid Network in September. Among the most significant attacks are Bybit’s in 2025, a $615 million Ronin Bridge hack in 2022 and a $611 million hack of the Poly Network in 2021.
Related: Symbiosis says recovered 15 BTC from bridge hack, offers 20% bounty
Bitget initially reported that the exchange had suspended withdrawals following the loss of $352 million in digital assets in a Thursday attack. Chen later updated the incident report to reflect a “more complete accounting of transfers,” saying that about $388 million had been lost.
Who’s responsible for the attack?
Chen also spoke to Cointelegraph about who may be behind the security breach. She said immediately following the attack that North Korea may have been responsible, based on “IP addresses that match the VPN choices by a certain [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] group,” but added that Bitget hadn’t “totally ruled out” the possibility of an inside job:
“This is a very complicated matter that we need to do a lot of investigation and quite thoroughly [sic] investigation. It’s more based on our preliminary results of the investigation, we have ruled out that possibility.”
Bitget began resuming withdrawals for users in stages, starting with Bitcoin (BTC) transactions on Monday and continuing with ETH on Tuesday.
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