Phased Withdrawal Restart Begins

Bitget (@bitget) has begun restoring user withdrawals following a major security breach on September 24 that drained approximately $388 million from the exchange's hot and warm wallets. The exchange started processing $BTC withdrawals on the Bitcoin network at 8 a.m. UTC on Monday as scheduled. Before resuming withdrawals, Bitget said each chain must pass a series of security checks, which is why withdrawals are being restored in stages.

Following the resumption of $BTC withdrawals, $ETH withdrawals on Ethereum, BSC, Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism are set to open on September 29 at 8 a.m. UTC. USDT withdrawals on Ethereum, BSC, Solana, and Tron will resume the following day, while all remaining assets, fiat withdrawals, and P2P transactions will be restored on October 2.

Scale of the Breach and Exchange Response

Bitget detected unauthorized transfers from its hot and warm wallets at 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026, and moved quickly to suspend all withdrawals. The breach did not involve stolen private keys. Attackers instead exploited a vulnerability in Bitget's backend wallet infrastructure, giving them the ability to spoof transaction authorization data and move funds without triggering the usual authentication checks.

Bitget raised its estimate of the overall theft to $387.5 million after including Zcash and TRON transfers missed in its initial accounting. The $388 million loss makes it the largest reported crypto theft so far this year, above exploits on KelpDAO and Drift Protocol.

Bitget said losses from the incident will be fully covered by the Bitget User Protection Fund, which holds 5,500 $BTC. The fund currently holds over $464 million, enough to absorb the revised loss figure with room to spare. User account balances remain unaffected, while trading and deposits continue to operate.

In an effort to recover stolen assets, Bitget has launched a bounty program where parties whose actions directly result in attacker funds being frozen or recovered will receive 5% of the amount successfully frozen. CEO Gracy Chen has floated a possible North Korean link based on IP and VPN similarities, though no government has publicly attributed the attack. Elliptic has determined this to be the largest suspected North Korean cryptocurrency theft case of 2026, pushing the total amount of stolen crypto assets for the year to over $1 billion.

Sources:
The Block: Bitget starts phased withdrawal resumption following $388 million exploit
Crypto Briefing: Bitget pauses withdrawals after $387.5M hack, CEO assures funds safe
CoinDesk: Bitget hacker moves $83 million in stolen XRP beyond reach of freeze controls