Liquid Network Heist: White-Hat Hackers Steal $320M, Return Most Funds

A significant cryptocurrency heist occurred on September 6, 2026, when approximately 4,000 BTC were drained from Liquid Network's federation wallet through a vulnerability in Elements software. The withdrawal of $320 million worth of Bitcoin was processed by SideSwap and went unnoticed due to its normal transaction appearance.

The following day, 3,400 of the stolen Bitcoins returned to the federation address, leaving around 598.5 BTC ($47 million) still missing. The actors behind the heist identified themselves as white-hat hackers through a message in Bitcoin's OP_RETURN field and PGP-encrypted text.

Blockstream confirmed that they patched the affected bridge nodes on September 7, but negotiations over the remaining funds are ongoing. Charles Guillemet, CTO at Ledger, publicly questioned whether the actors' actions were truly white-hat given their retention of $47 million.