Bitget says BTC withdrawals are open after $387.5M hot wallet breach
In brief
- Bitget opened BTC withdrawals on the Bitcoin network Sept. 28, the first phase of its reopening plan.
- Bitget's estimate of affected assets rose from about $351.6 million to approximately $387.5 million.
- Customer balances are unaffected, Bitget says, and its Protection Fund will cover the financial impact.
- ETH on at least one network is scheduled to reopen Sept. 29 at 08:00 UTC.
What Bitget has said so far
Bitget's first estimate put the affected assets at about $351.6 million. A Sept. 25 update raised that to approximately $387.5 million after the exchange identified more transactions from the original incident (Bitget said the revision didn't reflect any additional unauthorized transfers).
The company says customer balances weren't affected and that its Protection Fund will cover the incident's financial impact. Those are Bitget's own assurances.
Its phased plan sets 08:00 UTC as the restart time on each scheduled date. ETH on at least one network is scheduled for Sept. 29, so a customer holding ETH there is on a different timetable than someone withdrawing BTC on the Bitcoin network.
Bitget's notice says the service is open, but it doesn't document a completed customer withdrawal.
Futures order book snapshot
According to CryptoSlate's review of Bitget's public trade feed, the feed returned 100 BTCUSDT futures fills between 04:20:25 and 04:20:49 UTC on Sept. 28. It returned 100 ETHUSDT fills between 04:20:34 and 04:20:52 UTC.
A snapshot taken around 04:21 UTC showed $22.14 million of displayed BTC futures orders and $10.29 million of ETH futures orders within 0.05% of each contract's midpoint. Quoted spreads were thin (about 0.012 basis points for BTC and about 0.038 for ETH).
CryptoSlate also modeled a hypothetical $500,000 sell against a static book. That sale would've averaged 0.0095% below the BTC midpoint and 0.0183% below the ETH midpoint, before fees. No actual customer order produced those prices.
Pre-breach context and what comes next
A TokenInsight study that sampled nine venues from Aug. 16 through Sept. 14 ranked Bitget first for combined BTC and ETH futures depth. At the tighter 0.03% band, Bitget came in third at $15.25 million, behind MEXC and Hyperliquid.
That study ended before the breach, though. Its different window and methods rule out a measured before-and-after comparison (or a current peer ranking), so the Sept. 28 snapshot can't show whether depth changed.
The next test, per CryptoSlate, is whether Bitcoin withdrawals actually complete in practice. After that, it's each other asset and network in Bitget's plan, one 08:00 UTC restart at a time.
Frequently asked questions
When will Bitget reopen ETH withdrawals after the hack?
Bitget's phased plan sets 08:00 UTC as the restart time on each scheduled date. ETH on at least one network was scheduled to reopen on Sept. 29, on a different timetable from BTC withdrawals on the Bitcoin network, which opened Sept. 28.
Who is covering the losses from the Bitget hot wallet breach?
Bitget said customer balances were unaffected and that its Protection Fund would cover the incident's financial impact. Those are the exchange's own assurances. Its estimate of affected assets rose from about $351.6 million to approximately $387.5 million.
