Liquid Sidechain Heist: White-Hat Hacker Drains $320M in BTC

Roughly $320 million in Bitcoin was drained from Liquid's L-BTC token wallet on Sunday, leaving it with about $20,000 worth of BTC. The withdrawal took place via SideSwap, which processed the 4,000 BTC transaction initiated at 14:05 UTC.

The party responsible for the theft claims to be a 'white-hat' hacker and has been in open negotiations with Blockstream, Liquid's technology provider, since Sunday evening. They requested that most of the coins be returned to a federation address, but only if the bug in Elements software is patched first.

Blockstream replied affirmatively to the return request but did not agree to patch the bug immediately. Charles Guillemet, Ledger's Chief Technology Officer, questioned the 'white-hat' framing, comparing it to the 2022 Ronin bridge attack.