$387.5 Million Lost in Bitget Wallet Breach as Exchange Limits Containment Efforts

Bitget, a cryptocurrency exchange, has revised its estimate of assets affected by an unauthorized wallet breach to $387.5 million. The incident occurred on September 24th and involved transfers across multiple blockchain networks.

The exchange initially reported losses of $351.6 million but added transactions involving Zcash and TRON to the total. Bitget noted that this revised estimate does not include transfers made after containment measures were put in place.

Abnormal activity was detected at 2:31:11 p.m. ET on September 24th, prompting Bitget to pause withdrawals as part of its emergency response. The affected assets included XRP, Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT), Zcash (ZEC), USD Coin (USDC), BNB, Avalanche (AVAX), and TRON (TRX).

Bitget's cold wallets and user account balances were unaffected by the breach, but the loss fell within a protection fund holding more than $464 million. Blockchain records showed 21 transfers across eight networks, with funds continuing to leave Bitget-linked wallets until 5:23 p.m. ET on September 24th.

Bitget has launched a recovery bounty offering 5% of funds successfully frozen and another 5% of funds recovered. The incident highlights the limitations of exchange-level controls when it comes to preventing unauthorized transactions involving native assets like ETH and XRP, which lack central issuers that can stop transfers.