Crypto exchange Bitget says $352 million affected in a hack, claims user funds are 'safe'

Crypto exchange Bitget lost $351.6 million dollars to a system breach on Thursday, CEO Gracy Chen announced in a social media post.

In a post on X, Chen said that Bitget’s cold wallets and user funds were safe, and that there were “unauthorized transfers from some of our hot wallets.” The exchange maintains a “user protection fund” that had over $464 million in it, she said.

“Cold wallets remain fully secure. Bitget operates a three-tier wallet architecture — the breach contained only a portion of the hot wallet and warm wallet layers,” she added.

Deposits and trading remain online, she said, but the exchange is “temporarily” pausing withdrawals until it can finish a security review.

Onchain data and independent blockchain researchers had earlier flagged unusual wallet movements, initially reporting that around $183 million in digital assets had moved from wallets labeled as belonging to the exchange.

Emmett Gallic, an analyst at blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, said in an X post that the transactions involved three Bitget hot wallets and one cold wallet across multiple blockchains, with the funds consolidated into a single address. The assets included ETH, BNB, AVAX and USDT0, according to his analysis.