Today, Bybit experienced a massive hack from Lazarus Group that wiped out 400,000 ETH worth around $1.5 billion from its cold wallets today and shortly after said it was gonna get some loans to settle users. An hour after that, Binance and Bitget stepped in, sending over 50,000 ETH straight into Bybit’s wallets, effectively acting as an emergency liquidity lifeline.
On-chain analyst Conor Grogan spotted the transactions, calling Bitget’s particularly shocking. “Bitget’s deposits are especially interesting; it’s a quarter of all of the exchange’s ETH!” he said. The funds were transferred directly to Bybit’s cold wallets, bypassing standard deposit addresses, meaning this was a coordinated rescue effort. Conor also pointed out that Binance wasn’t this quick to support FTX back when it collapsed in 2022, though that was a very different matter altogether.
Binance and Bitget just deposited 50k+ ETH directly into Bybit's cold wallets. Bitget's deposits are especially interesting; its 1/4 of all of the exchange's ETH! (that I can see)
Since they skipped a deposit address, these funds were coordinated directly by Bybit themselves pic.twitter.com/yimpcYpLx7
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) February 21, 2025
Meanwhile, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou assured users that the platform was working on a bridge loan to cover losses. “We will make users whole for any coins we can’t reclaim,” he said.
“As far as we know this could be the largest hack in the history of our industry,” Zhou added later in a live-stream update.
Zhou said there had been a rush to withdraw from the exchange but the flow had slowed. He said the site was getting a bridge loan from its partners and it would make users whole for any coins it could not reclaim.
Anyway, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes hollered at Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, saying, “@VitalikButerin will you advocate to roll back the chain to help Bybit?” This of course is a terrible idea that would split the chan in half, but at this point, everyone’s just desperate to stop these hackers.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin and Ether both dipped sharply after the Bybit hack, according to data from CoinGecko, as Bitcoin fell 2.1% to around $96,057, reversing earlier gains of up to 1.4%. Ether, the stolen asset in the hack, slid more than 7% from its daily high, trading near $2,632 at press time.
Shares of Coinbase Global Inc. have fallen by more than 5%, despite an earlier rally after the company announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was set to drop its case against the exchange. Strategy (formerly known as MicroStrategy) remained flat, and so did shares of Bitcoin miner Riot, which only saw an increase of around 1.6%.
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