Updated 4 hours ago Published 4 hours ago
2 min read
Digital asset platform Bitget had $351.6 million impacted by a network infiltration on Thursday, according to an announcement made by CEO Gracy Chen via a social media post.
Through a statement on X, Chen mentioned that customer balances and offline cold storage vaults stayed protected, noting that “unauthorized transfers from some of our hot wallets” did take place. She pointed out that the platform maintains an active “user protection fund” containing upward of $464 million.
She further stated, “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.”
While trading and deposits continue to function normally, she noted that the company is placing withdrawals on a “temporary” hold until a comprehensive security assessment concludes.
Blockchain tracking data and independent investigators previously flagged irregular transfers, initially estimating that roughly $183 million in virtual currencies shifted away from addresses linked to the trading venue.
Arkham Intelligence blockchain analyst Emmett Gallic explained in an X statement that these transfers involved three Bitget hot wallets and one cold wallet across multiple distributed networks, with the capital converging into a single destination. His analysis showed that the tokens included ETH, BNB, AVAX, and USDT0.
In a separate post mentioning that additional funds were shifting, he stated, “Looks like Bitget just got hacked for $178M.”
She committed to releasing a full incident summary inside a 24-hour window.
Hot wallets remain linked to operational frameworks that handle transaction requests and payouts, making them more vulnerable than cold storage setups built to keep cryptographic private keys entirely disconnected from the web.
Should the total impact reach $351.6 million, this incident would stand as potentially the largest security breach of 2026. September has proven particularly punishing for the digital economy, following a $320 million exploit against the Liquid Network earlier this month, where the perpetrators asserted they operated as ethical “white hat hackers.”
The exchange’s proprietary token, BGB, experienced a steep decline following initial reports of the breach, though it regained some value prior to 22:10 UTC. As of publication time, the asset traded down by 2.9%. Over the preceding 24-hour trading cycle, Bitcoin values dropped roughly 0.29%, whereas Ether registered a 0.2% decline.
UPDATE (Sept. 24, 2026, 22:10 UTC): Includes market responses regarding the security incident.
UPDATE (Sept. 24, 2026, 22:05 UTC): Refines terminology concerning the network breach.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/24/crypto-exchange-bitget-loses-usd352-million-in-hack-claims-user-funds-are-safe.
