Bybit ‘Back to 100%’ After Historic $1.5 Billion Hack

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit says it has replenished its reserve following a record-breaking $1.5 billion hack.

The company announced Monday (Feb. 24) that it had conducted a fresh audit and restored its reserve to a 1:1 ratio within 72 hours of last week’s incident.

“Bybit fully backs all customer assets entrusted to our platform, maintaining a dynamic ratio of over 1:1,” Ben Zhou, Bybit’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.

“We are fortunate to have all-weather friends in a cut-throat industry—our peers and even competitors stood with us during challenging times, and our customers deserve the same level of commitment.”

In a comment posted to X Sunday (Feb. 23) evening, Zhao said the audit would show that his company was “back to 100%.”

Bybit announced Friday (Feb. 21) that some of its holdings had been stolen in a cyberattack, saying that the hacker was able to transfer some of the firm’s holdings to an unidentified address after gaining control of one of Bybit’s ethereum (ETH) cold wallets when it was carrying out a transfer to one of its warm wallets.

While the company did not say how much was taken, Bloomberg News shared an estimate from analysts pegging the loss at nearly $1.5 billion worth of tokens.

Rob Behnke, co-founder and executive chairman of blockchain security firm Halborn, told Bloomberg the theft was likely the “largest incident ever, not just crypto.”

The company said Monday that the audit showed that Bybit holds “sufficient reserves to cover user assets 1:1 across the board,” and that assets such as bitcoin, ethereum, solana and the stablecoins USDT and USDC “exceed 100% collateral ratios” on the exchange.

“Held to high standards of transparency and prudence, Bybit reaffirms its commitment to fiscal vigilance and customer protection under all circumstances,” the company said.

The massive incident comes amid a downturn in crypto hacking, as noted here late last year. A report in December from blockchain data platform Chainalysis found that while the intensity of crypto hacking increased in the first half of 2024, it “slowed considerably” in July and remained relatively steady for the remainder of the year.

Hackers stole $2.2 billion in crypto 2024, higher than the $1.8 billion taken in 2023 but still below the record $3.7 billion stolen in 2022. With the Bybit incident, hackers are already nearly halfway to reaching the 2022 record just seven weeks into the year.