Bitget's $352M Hot-Wallet Glow-Up: Patched, Paused, and Poised to Unpause 💸

Bitget will phase the resumption of crypto withdrawals across its platform following a security breach that drained roughly $351.6 million from some of its hot and warm wallets on September 24. The exchange confirmed that the exploit has been identified and remediated, with additional testing underway across the withdrawal system by its security and technical teams. Bitget's customer balances were not impacted by the incident.

Withdrawals will reopen in four stages beginning September 28 at 08:00 UTC with $BTC, followed by $ETH on September 29 and USDT on September 30. The remaining tokens, fiat services and P2P transactions are scheduled to be restored by October 2. The exchange described the temporary pause as a precautionary measure. "The vulnerability involved in the incident has been identified and remediated," Bitget wrote on X.

The largest asset drained was XRP, with approximately $157.5 million stolen, alongside Ethereum holdings from the platform's hot and warm wallet infrastructure. Circle and Tether froze about $318,000 in USDT and USDC tied to the incident, limiting the attackers' ability to liquidate those stablecoins. The combined value of frozen stablecoins represents a small fraction of the overall loss.

Bitget operates as a centralized exchange offering trading across more than 500 cryptocurrencies, including $BTC and $ETH. The exchange has not publicly attributed the attack to a specific threat actor, and no on-chain forensic firm has been named in Bitget's communications regarding the investigation. The September 24 breach ranks among the larger centralized exchange incidents of 2024 by total value.

The exchange stated that the suspension of withdrawals will remain in place until each staged rollout is completed and verified. Users attempting to withdraw assets outside of the reopening windows will continue to see transactions pending until the corresponding phase goes live.