- Bybit lost approximately $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum (401,346 ETH) in what is now considered the largest crypto theft in history.
- Bybit’s CEO stated that the exchange remains solvent and can cover the loss even if the stolen assets are not recovered.
Bybit, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed on Friday that it had suffered a major security breach, resulting in the theft of approximately $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH). The attack, described as "sophisticated," targeted one of the company’s offline cold wallets.
Bybit’s co-founder and CEO, Ben Zhou, revealed in a livestream that hackers stole around 401,346 ETH. According to crypto security firm Elliptic and researcher ZachXBT, this is the largest known theft in crypto history, surpassing the Ronin Network and Poly Network breaches, which saw losses of $624 million and $611 million, respectively, as tracked by Rekt.
“In fact, it may even be the largest single theft of all time,” said Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s co-founder and chief scientist.
He noted that this could be the biggest financial heist in any category. Before this, the largest known bank robbery was the withdrawal of around $1 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq, according to World Finance.
Zhou explained on X that the hacker gained control of one of Bybit’s cold wallets and transferred the funds to a warm wallet, which is connected to the internet. Despite the staggering loss, Bybit maintains that it remains financially stable.
Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about 1 hr ago. It appears that this specific transaction was musked, all the signers saw the musked UI which showed the correct address and the URL was from @safe . However the signing message was to change…
— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 21, 2025
“We are solvent and can cover the loss,” Zhou stated in a public post, emphasizing that the company can absorb the hit even if the stolen assets are not recovered.
Dubai-based Bybit had approximately $16 billion in total assets as of last week, according to CoinMarketCap. The scale of this attack is particularly significant considering that in all of 2024, hackers stole roughly $2.2 billion in total from the crypto industry, and in 2023, that figure stood at around $2 billion, according to Chainalysis and other estimates.
Edited by Harshajit Sarmah
