Bybit loses $1.4 billion worth of crypto in one of largest crypto hacks in history

Cryptocurrency exchange platform, Bybit has been hacked resulting in the loss of $1.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency. The sophisticated attack, which led to the theft of Ethereum (ETH) from one of the company’s offline wallets, is reported to be one of the largest crypto hacks in history.

Announced by Bybit’s chief executive and co-founder Ben Zhou, he said via a livestream that the hackers stole around 401,346 ETH, which at the time of the theft amounts to about $1.4 billion. 

The incident was first reported by crypto security firm Elliptic and crypto security researcher ZachXBT, where they noted that the total amount of ETH stolen is worth around $1.4 billion in liquid-staked Ether, Mantle Stacked ETH (mETH) and other ERC-20 tokens, making it the largest known theft of crypto in history. 

“In fact, it may even be the largest single theft of all time,” Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s co-founder and chief scientist said while referring to any kind of theft, not just data breaches. 

Following the Bybit hack confirmation, the price of Ether (ETH) dropped by over 4 per cent as it sent shockwaves through the crypto market.

In addition, Zhou wrote on X that the hacker “took control” of one of the company’s cold wallets, a digital wallet that stores cryptocurrency but in theory isn’t connected to the internet, and transferred funds to a “warm” wallet, which is online. The Bybit CEO also wrote that the company is “solvent” and “can cover the loss” even if it can’t recover the stolen funds.

Zhou also said the specific transaction was masked to appear legitimate but contained malicious source code designed to alter the smart contract logic of the wallet and siphon funds. 

Zhou reassured customers: “Please rest assured that all other cold wallets are secure. All withdrawals are NORMAL. I will keep you guys posted as more develops. If any team can help us to track the stolen funds will be appreciated.”

According to CoinMarketCap, Bybit, which is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, had an estimated total assets of $16 billion as of last week.

Similar Read: North Korean hackers stole over $659 million worth of crypto in 2024, pose IT workers as spies.

Aside from Bybit, here are other major hacks

While the Bybit hack could be the biggest ever crypto exchange hack in history, there have been other famous attacks. 

According to data collected by Rekt, a site that tracks web3 and crypto breaches, the previous highest crypto breaches were the hacks against the Ronin Network and Poly Network, which resulted in the loss of $624 million and $611 million, respectively. 

Japan’s DMM Bitcoin and India’s WazirX crypto exchanges also reported attacks last year. WazirX reported a loss of $235 million, while $305 million was stolen from DMM Bitcoin. Others are the CoinCheck ($530 million) and Mt. Gox ($470 million) hacks.

The withdrawal of around $1 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq is said to be the largest bank robbery of all time, according to the financial news.

The incident follows several high-profile hacks and security incidents throughout 2024 and early 2025

According to a report by Chainalysis, cybercrime actors stole $2.2 billion from various cryptocurrency platforms in 2024. Also, $1.3 billion of the unlawful funds were stolen by North Korean hackers, this represents 61 per cent which is more than half of the total illicit funds.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics platform that has been analyzing cryptocurrency flows for several years, explained that 2024 is the fifth year in the past decade that hackers have stolen over $1bn from crypto firms.

The 2024 statistics compared to that of 2023 – which recorded $1.8 billion represents a 21 per cent year-on-year (YoY) increase. Individual attacks also rose by 7 per cent to 303 in 2024 from 282 in 2023.

The summed value stolen during the first half of the year was $1.58 billion, which represents an 84 per cent increase on the same period in 2023. If matched in the second half of the year, the figure would have led to losses of more than $3 billion for the entire 2024. 

Meanwhile, the boils of cyberattacks on cryptocurrency which slowed down during the second half of the year was attributed to geopolitical reasons.