Bitget said a security breach affected $351.6 million in assets Thursday, with CEO Gracy Chen saying the exchange’s cold wallets and customer funds remain secure.
Chen disclosed the incident on X after on-chain researchers identified unusual transfers from wallets associated with the exchange. She said the breach involved unauthorized transactions from a number of Bitget’s hot wallets.
Bitget maintains a user protection fund containing more than $464 million, Chen said, adding another layer of coverage for customers affected by the incident.
She said the exchange uses a three-tier wallet structure and that the attack was confined to portions of its hot- and warm-wallet infrastructure. Cold wallets, she said, remained fully secure.
Bitget continued to support deposits and trading following the incident, but temporarily halted withdrawals while conducting a security review.
Blockchain monitoring data had already highlighted unusual activity before the exchange confirmed the breach. Initial reports indicated that roughly $183 million in crypto had been transferred from wallets believed to belong to Bitget.
Emmett Gallic, an analyst at Arkham Intelligence, identified three Bitget hot wallets and one cold wallet involved in transactions across several blockchain networks. The assets included ETH, BNB, AVAX and USDT0, with the transferred funds later gathered at a single address.
Gallic initially estimated that about $178 million had been compromised and later reported additional transfers from the wallets.
Chen said Bitget would provide a detailed report on the incident within 24 hours.
Hot wallets are typically connected to online systems that facilitate trading and withdrawals, making them more accessible than cold wallets. Cold storage is designed to isolate private signing credentials from internet-connected infrastructure.
A confirmed loss of up to $351.6 million would potentially make the Bitget incident one of the largest crypto security breaches of 2026. The Liquid Network also suffered a $320 million hack earlier in September, although the attackers claimed they were “white hat hackers.”
Bitget’s BGB token fell sharply as reports of the breach spread but recovered some of the decline by 22:10 UTC. The token was down 2.9% at press time.
Bitcoin had fallen 0.29% over the previous 24 hours, while ether was down 0.2%.
The report was updated Sept. 24, 2026, at 22:10 UTC to include market reaction and at 22:05 UTC to clarify the description of the exploit.
