This whole Liquid Network situation is honestly pretty wild. Around 4,000 $BTC , roughly $320M, was drained after attackers exploited a bug in Elements and created unbacked L-BTC that could be redeemed for real $BTC. What makes the story interesting is what happened after. The attackers called themselves white hats, contacted the team on-chain, waited for the bug to be patched, then returned around 3,400 BTC. That’s most of the money. But they still kept around 600 BTC, close to $47M, as what they basically see as their bounty. And this is where I’m a bit divided. On one side, they clearly found a serious vulnerability and probably helped prevent someone else from exploiting it later with zero intention of returning anything. Returning most of the $BTC also shows this wasn’t just a normal drain-and-disappear situation. But keeping $47M and deciding yourself that this is your reward feels very different from a normal bug bounty. You found the bug, took control of $320M, returned most of it after the fix, then kept a huge amount as payment. That’s a lot of leverage. So personally, I can understand why people call them white hats, but I can also understand why others see it as holding the remaining funds hostage. For now I’d probably just call them self-described white hats until this whole thing is fully settled.