Bybit Seeing ‘Massive Withdrawals’ After $1.4 Billion Ethereum Theft: CEO

Centralized cryptocurrency exchange Bybit is struggling to keep up with withdrawals following a hack that saw over $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum and related assets swiped early Friday.

In a livestream following the incident, Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou said that the firm has “experienced massive withdrawals in the last two hours.”

However, he added that there are thousands of pending withdrawals that the firm is still working through because it needs to move liquidity around. Zhou told viewers that it would work through pending withdrawal requests within “a few hours,” and that the firm had no plans to suspend withdrawals.

Data from CoinGecko shows that Bybit has seen over $8 billion in spot trading volume over the last 24 hours—a nearly 46% spike over the last day. A chart shows a sizable spike in volume following the disclosure of the attack.

Zhou explained that Bybit is seeking a bridge loan to help plug the hole after the funds were swiped, rather than purchase Ethereum from the market to help make customers whole.

The CEO added that the team still doesn’t know how exactly hackers managed to make away with the crypto—despite it being held in cold, multi-signature wallets—but said that it was possible thieves managed to hack the UI of all signers’ computers.

A multi-sig wallet requires several people to approve a transaction signing it off with a hardware wallet. Zhou also said it was possible the brand behind their Ethereum multi-sig wallet, Safe, might have been targeted.

“I’m just saying all the possibilities, not accusing people—it could be that the Safe server was hacked,” Zhao said.

Safe said in a tweet that it had “not found evidence that the official Safe frontend was compromised.”

Previously, Zhou wrote on X that Bybit could “cover the loss” even if it cannot recover the stolen funds via the help of law enforcement. During the livestream, Zhou said that the stolen funds represent approximately 1/20 of the total assets under management by Bybit.

Editor’s note: This story is breaking and will be updated with additional details.