Bitget suspends withdrawals after hackers take US$352 million

[SINGAPORE] Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget reported an estimated US$351.6 million in unauthorised transfers from some of its wallets and temporarily suspended withdrawals.

“User funds are safe,” CEO Gracy Chen said in a post on X early on Friday (Sep 25) in Singapore. “The full amount of this loss falls within the coverage of Bitget’s User Protection Fund, which currently holds over US$464 million.”

The hack continues a spate of recent attacks that have put crypto cybersecurity in the spotlight.

Earlier in September, US$320 million worth of Bitcoin was drained from a wallet used by blockchain Liquid Network, while in August the hack of the popular offline Bitcoin wallet Coldcard raised questions about the safest way to store the digital asset.

Founded in 2018, Bitget is one of the leading centralised crypto exchanges globally.

It was among those that grew rapidly after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022, as traders shifted activity to surviving platforms.

The Seychelles-registered exchange currently has 120 million registered users, going by its website.

The hack “is one of the most substantive centralised exchange exploits of 2026” and “another wake-up call for the digital-assets industry”, said Esme Pau, head of capital markets and policy at blockchain-security company CertiK.

“The scale of the drain at around three-quarters of the exchange’s User Protection Fund transcends a security lapse and makes it a crisis event.”

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Swapped for Ether

The hacker has swapped about US$183 million of the stolen funds for Ether tokens, said blockchain-analytics platform Lookonchain.

Chen said Bitget operates a three-tier wallet architecture, and the breach was confined to portions of hot-wallet and warm-wallet layers, with cold wallets remaining secure.

Hot wallets stay online for frequent transactions, cold wallets stay offline for maximum security, while warm wallets sit in between.

“Deposits and trading remain fully operational,” she added. “Withdrawals are temporarily paused and will be restored as soon as the security review is complete.”

Details of how the hack was carried out were not provided.

A full incident report including root cause analysis and corrective actions will be published within 24 hours, she said.

“We will not speculate on the attack vector until the investigation is complete,” she added.

Aneirin Flynn, chief executive of cybersecurity technology company FailSafe, said the significance of the Bitget hack “is that it destroys the illusion that major exchanges have solved hot-wallet security”.

“Even though their protection fund covers the loss, a breach of this size severely damages institutional trust in crypto infrastructure,” he said. BLOOMBERG