Bitget CEO Says Recovery Odds Look Grim, Cites Bybit's 3.5% Freeze Rate 💸

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the exchange is "not very optimistic" about freezing or recovering the full $388 million in crypto assets lost in a Thursday security breach, pointing to the slow progress of last year's Bybit hack as a reference point. "I'm actually not very optimistic because after a year or so of Bybit's hack, they've only [been able to freeze] about 3.5% of the total stolen funds," Chen said on Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction, released Tuesday. "That's only the freezing. It's not about recovery yet." Bybit reported in February 2025 that hackers stole about $1.5 billion in Ether (ETH), with only $80 million frozen and recovered combined.

Bitget launched a bounty program offering 5% of funds frozen and 5% for those recovered. The team behind NEAR Intents said on Monday it had blocked more than $50 million in assets tied to the attack and frozen about $500,000. Chen also confirmed that stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle blacklisted a wallet linked to the exploit, freezing $318,013 in USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC).

The breach is among the largest to hit the crypto industry in 2026, following a $320 million exploit of the Liquid Network in September. Other major incidents include Bybit's $1.5 billion hack in 2025, the $615 million Ronin Bridge hack in 2022 and the $611 million Poly Network hack in 2021. Bitget initially reported $352 million in losses before updating the figure to $388 million following what Chen described as "a more complete accounting of transfers."

Chen also addressed the suspected perpetrators, saying the company initially identified North Korean-linked activity based on "IP addresses that match the VPN choices by a certain [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] group," but had not "totally ruled out" the possibility of an inside job. "This is a very complicated matter that we need to do a lot of investigation and quite thoroughly [sic] investigation," she said. Bitget began resuming withdrawals in stages on Monday with Bitcoin (BTC) and continued with ETH on Tuesday.