Bitget confirms $351.6 million hot wallet breach

Bitget, a large centralized crypto exchange, confirmed that attackers drained roughly $351.6 million from some of its hot and warm wallets on September 24. According to CryptoSlate, the exchange's systems flagged the unauthorized transfers at 18:31 UTC — fifteen separate transfers spread across seven different cryptocurrencies, with Ethereum accounting for the largest share at 44.4% of the confirmed losses.

Bitget suspended withdrawals while it conducted a security review, though deposits and trading continued to operate. CEO Gracy Chen said the exchange's cold wallets and the bulk of customer assets were unaffected, and that any losses fall within the coverage of Bitget's User Protection Fund, which the exchange says holds more than $464 million.

"The full amount of this loss falls within the coverage of Bitget's User Protection Fund."

Bitget said it would not speculate on how the wallets were compromised until its investigation is complete, and pledged a full incident report along with hourly updates in the days following the breach.

The episode is a reminder of a distinction worth keeping in mind: funds held on an exchange sit in wallets controlled by that exchange's operational security, not by the account holder. Self-custody with a hardware wallet or a properly backed-up seed phrase removes that dependency — but only if the recovery process behind it is solid. An exchange breach doesn't touch coins that were never on the exchange in the first place.

— WalletRecover Team