Historic $1.4 Billion Bybit Hack: The Largest Crypto Heist Ever Shakes the Industry!

The crypto community is no stranger to big-scale thefts and scams. Something or another has happened repeatedly that raised the question about the landscape’s security. In similar events, the scammers strike again, and Bybit is the target. On Friday, February 21st, Bybit was hit by a massive hack that resulted in a loss of $1.4 billion in crypto assets. This has sent shockwaves down the landscape. 

This massive scam has made everyone turn their eyes towards Bybit. Co-founder Elliptic and chief scientist of Elliptic Tim Robinson shared a statement to the Block. Robinson stated, “This makes it the largest crypto theft of all time, by some margin.” He further added, “The next largest crypto theft would be the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021. In fact it may even be the largest single theft of all time. We’ve labelled the thief’s addresses in our software, to help to prevent these funds from being cashed-out through other exchanges.” 

The Hack 

On Friday, a group of hackers stole approximately 1.4 billion US dollars worth of ETH from Bybit’s cold wallet, as confirmed by the exchange. Per the statement, the hacker(s) managed to trick Bybit’s ETH cold wallet signers into approving a sketchy transaction. This allowed the hackers to gain access to and control the wallet.  

Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, took to social media to break the news about the hack. Zhou claimed, “Bybit is Solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of the clients assets are 1 to 1 backed, we can cover the loss.” However, the statement did not provide any additional details about the scam. 

Flashbot strategy lead Hasu also went on to social media to allay the panic among Bybit investors. As per Hasu, “If you want my serious take, Bybit has way more than 1.4 billion of revenue per year… they are good for the money and will make all customers whole. It doesn’t matter for ETH because Bybit will honor customers’s ETH liabilities and buy back the assets on open market.” 

Meanwhile, Arkham Intelligence offered a bounty to track down the perpetrator. The firm posted a warning on X stating, “We’ve created and funded a bounty to help identify the person or organization behind today’s [over] $1 billion Bybit hack… Submissions to this bounty will be shared with the Bybit team to support their investigation. Reward: 50,000 ARKM.” Therefore, it seems like the community is up in arms.  

However, this is not the first time something like this happened. Last year in May, a Japanese crypto company lost 4,500 BTCs, amounting to $300 million. Before that, FTX lost a total of $477 million in 2022. Therefore, such events raise questions on the security aspect of the crypto landscape.