Jakarta, Indonesia Sentinel — Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has reportedly fallen victim to a massive hack. The exchange’s reported nearly $1.5 billion worth of tokens was stolen, making it the largest crypto theft in history.
Accroding to Coinvestation, the security breach at the crypto exchange giant Bybit was first uncovered by on-chain analyst ZachXBT, who detected a series of suspicious transactions originating from Bybit’s wallet on Friday night (February 21, 2025).
ZachXBT reported on Telegram post that the transactions totaling approximately $1.46 billion, raised immediate concerns about a potential hack or security breach. He also shared blockchain addresses linked to the outflow of funds revealed that the stolen assets included mETH and stETH, which were later converted back into ETH via decentralized exchanges (DEX)
Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain research firm, also confirmed the outflow of approximately $1.4 billion from Bybit. In a post on X, the firm noted that the funds had begun moving to new addresses, where they were subsequently sold.
Meanwhile, Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic confirmed that this is the largest crypto theft on record, surpassing the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021.
Bybit Confrimed
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that a hacker had gained control of one of the exchange’s offline Ethereum wallets, according to Bloomberg on Saturday (February 22, 2025), .
The exchange’s also made an announcement on X stating that they have detected unauthorized activity involving one of its ETH cold wallets. “The incident occurred when our ETH multisig cold wallet executed a transfer to our warm wallet. Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack,” Bybit stated on X post.
The attack targeted Bybit’s cold wallet system, an offline storage method designed for enhanced security. Most of the stolen funds were in Ether, which the hackers transferred to multiple wallets before liquidating them through various platforms.
Breach Impact
Founded in 2018, Bybit processes over $36 billion in average daily trading volume. Before the hack, Bybit held around $16.2 billion in assets on its platform, according to reserve data from CoinMarketCap. The stolen Ether accounts for roughly 9% of its total holdings.
The massive breach has led to a surge in withdrawals, with users fearing that Bybit could face insolvency. CEO Ben Zhou reassured customers that the exchange remains operational.
“Bybit Hot wallet, Warm wallet and all other cold wallets are fine. The only cold wallet that was hacked was ETH cold wallet. All withdraws are Normal,” Zhou states.
Zhou reported that bybit have had a total number of more than 350 thousands withdraws requests so far, with around 2100 withdraw requests left to be processed. “Overall 99. 994% withdraws have been completed” Zhou said.
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Company Reassurance
Despite the breach, Zhou assured users that Bybit remains financially stable and that customer funds are secure. “Bybit is Solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed, we can cover the loss,” Zhou stated.
According to Bisnis, Zhou also hosted a live session on X to address client concerns, revealing that Bybit has secured a bridge loan from partners and recovered approximately 80% of the funds needed to cover the losses.
Meanwhile, the exchange is working to recover the stolen assets and pursue legal action against the hackers. As of now, there is no information on who is behind the hack in what has been described as the largest theft in the history of the crypto industry.
As Bybit is still conducting an investigation, the exchange has assured that it will provide updates as soon as more details emerge. “Bybit will come out with a full incident report as well as security measures in the next few days,” the company stated.
(Raidi/Agung)
