Bitget's Hot Wallets Got Cold Feet — $352M Drained, CEO Says User Funds Are Chill 🧊

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget confirmed that approximately $352 million in digital assets was drained from its hot and warm wallet infrastructure during a security breach detected at 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026, according to CEO Gracy Chen. Chen said the company's cold wallets remain "fully secure" and that only portions of the hot wallet and warm wallet layers were affected. "User funds are safe. The full amount of this loss falls within the coverage of Bitget's User Protection Fund, which currently holds over $464 million," Chen posted on X. The exchange is temporarily pausing withdrawals while it conducts a security review, with deposits and trading continuing to operate.

Independent blockchain researchers, including analysts from Bubblemaps and Arkham Intelligence, flagged unusual wallet movements before the exchange's confirmation. Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic reported that within roughly an hour, about $183 million in assets moved from wallets labeled as belonging to Bitget into a newly created address, beginning with "0x770," across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Arbitrum. The transactions involved three Bitget hot wallets and one cold wallet, with the funds consolidated into a single destination address. On-chain data showed assets including ETH, BNB, AVAX, USDC, USDT, and XAUT, a token backed by physical gold, among the funds moved.

A newly created address beginning with "0xe410" took $19.67 million worth of USDT0, a cross-chain version of the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether, and swapped it for 7,111 ETH in approximately six minutes, according to researchers. The purchase was routed through UniswapX and 1inch Fusion, decentralized trading services that execute token swaps directly on the blockchain. Researchers noted the buyer paid up to roughly 5% above the prevailing market rate, a premium typical of transactions prioritizing speed over price optimization. Unlike USDT, ETH is decentralized and harder to seize once swapped.

The breach follows a string of notable exploits in September 2026, including the Liquid Network losing $320 million earlier in the month to attackers who claimed to be "white hat hackers." Bitget's native token, BGB, fell sharply following news of the exploit before partially recovering; the token was down 2.9% as of 22:10 UTC. Bitcoin's price was down approximately 0.29% and ether's price was down 0.2% over the preceding 24 hours. Chen said the company would publish a full incident report within 24 hours of the breach.