Bitget exchange announced it was hacked, with the hot wallet and warm wallet emptied; preliminary estimates place the loss at about $351.6 million, and subsequent reports raised the figure to about $387.5 million. The cold wallet was not affected. Bitget said users’ assets would be fully reimbursed.
This isn’t a small platform. Bitget is one of the global top ten derivatives exchanges. It has a complete compliance system, proof of reserves, and an insurance fund.
Then it got hit for $387 million.
I’m not questioning Bitget’s ability to handle this. They promised reimbursement, and there are historical precedents of similar cases being handled properly. I’m saying that this incident, every so often, reminds us—again in different forms—of the same thing: centralized exchanges’ hot wallets are always the highest-risk place to store assets.
“Not your keys, not your coins”—that line has been said too many times in the crypto space. It already sounds like an old cliché. But the reason it keeps becoming a cliché is because it’s always been right.
Ever since Mt. Gox in 2011, to the collapse of FTX, and every time a major exchange’s hot wallet gets emptied—the attack pattern changes, the amount changes, but the structural flaw doesn’t: users hand over the private keys to someone else for custody.
Today, BTC is trading sideways around 84,000. The total market cap is $2.98 trillion, the Fear & Greed index is 74, and overall market sentiment is stable. When the news of Bitget being hacked came out, the BTC price didn’t react much—because $387 million is a small number compared with a $2.98 trillion total market cap, and the market has enough liquidity to absorb it.
But for the users whose assets were stored in Bitget’s hot wallet, today’s experience isn’t “the market is calm.” It’s “suffering through that same waiting-for-news ordeal again.”
I’m not saying to move all coins to cold wallets—that also comes with its own risks: losing private keys, making mistakes in mnemonic phrase management, and historically the total amount of BTC lost hasn’t been less than the amount lost to hacker attacks.
What I am saying is that on September 26, this is a moment worth rethinking: how much of your assets are where, what risks correspond to those placements, and whether you can accept them.
In your view, has anyone put most of their positions on an exchange? After this Bitget hack, did you think about it again? Share your thoughts.
$BTC
#BTC
This isn’t a small platform. Bitget is one of the global top ten derivatives exchanges. It has a complete compliance system, proof of reserves, and an insurance fund.
Then it got hit for $387 million.
I’m not questioning Bitget’s ability to handle this. They promised reimbursement, and there are historical precedents of similar cases being handled properly. I’m saying that this incident, every so often, reminds us—again in different forms—of the same thing: centralized exchanges’ hot wallets are always the highest-risk place to store assets.
“Not your keys, not your coins”—that line has been said too many times in the crypto space. It already sounds like an old cliché. But the reason it keeps becoming a cliché is because it’s always been right.
Ever since Mt. Gox in 2011, to the collapse of FTX, and every time a major exchange’s hot wallet gets emptied—the attack pattern changes, the amount changes, but the structural flaw doesn’t: users hand over the private keys to someone else for custody.
Today, BTC is trading sideways around 84,000. The total market cap is $2.98 trillion, the Fear & Greed index is 74, and overall market sentiment is stable. When the news of Bitget being hacked came out, the BTC price didn’t react much—because $387 million is a small number compared with a $2.98 trillion total market cap, and the market has enough liquidity to absorb it.
But for the users whose assets were stored in Bitget’s hot wallet, today’s experience isn’t “the market is calm.” It’s “suffering through that same waiting-for-news ordeal again.”
I’m not saying to move all coins to cold wallets—that also comes with its own risks: losing private keys, making mistakes in mnemonic phrase management, and historically the total amount of BTC lost hasn’t been less than the amount lost to hacker attacks.
What I am saying is that on September 26, this is a moment worth rethinking: how much of your assets are where, what risks correspond to those placements, and whether you can accept them.
In your view, has anyone put most of their positions on an exchange? After this Bitget hack, did you think about it again? Share your thoughts.
$BTC
#BTC
