Over 25 years of serving tech enthusiasts.[19459019]Record $1.5 billion crypto-heist hits exchange. Ethereum reserves drained.

A hot-button: Bybit announced on Friday, a Dubai based crypto exchange had been hacked and that hackers had stolen $1.5 billion in digital assets. This is the largest crypto heist ever. The attackers exploited a security vulnerability during a transaction to transfer a large amount of Ethereum.

Hackers stole crypto from Bybit’s cold wallet. This is an offline storage system which is supposed to be very secure. All told, around 400,000 ETH was stolen. This represents over 70% of Bybit’s ETH reserves. Ethereum is the second largest crypto after Bitcoin.

Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, took to X not long after to reassure users their funds were secure and that the exchange will reimburse anyone affected by the breach. He said that Bybit, which holds about $20 billion in assets for its clients, would cover any unrecovered money through its own treasury and/or by borrowing from partners.

Bybit ETH cold wallet multisig just transferred money to our warm wallet a little over an hour ago. This transaction appears to have been musked. All signers saw a musked UI that showed the correct address, and the URL came from ahref=””https://twitter.com/safe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw””>@safe (19459029]”. The signing message would change.

Ben Zhou (@benbybit), February 21, 2025.

It is a heist that dwarfs previous crypto crimes. This hack dwarfs other massive hacks such as the $620 million Ronin Network job of 2022 and $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2020.

Some Blockchain analysis firms such as Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence tracked the stolen crypto, which was quickly scattered across different wallets before being cashed out on multiple platforms. They finally linked it to the infamous Lazarus Group – a North Korean state sponsored crew. These clever hackers have a history of stealing crypto to fund the wealthy elite of the regime. By 2022, it was estimated that they had looted more than $1 billion in crypto through multiple hacks and scams.

In an email to CNBC, Tom Robinson of Elliptic stated that in response to the Bybit hack, they have flagged the thief’s wallet addresses in the software to prevent the funds being laundered by other exchanges.

In addition to the hacking of Bybit, users also began withdrawing funds in a frenzy as they feared possible insolvency. Zhou, the company’s CEO, later confirmed that outflows have stabilized. He also stated that the company remains solvent, even if losses from the hack were not recovered, and that all client “1 to 1 backed.”

assets are”1 to 1 backed.”

Recent blog posts also reassure customers that Bybit’s platform and other services, such as trading products, cards, P2P and, are “fully operational.”