Bitget CEO Gracy Chen Locks Losses at $351.6 Million in Live Stream, Claims Numbers Have Not Increased
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen locked losses at $351.6 million during a live stream, stating that the figure has not increased. All 19 hacker transfers came from hot and warm wallets, with cold wallets untouched. The root cause has not been pinpointed, but three paths have been ruled out: no forged user information for withdrawals, no acquisition of wallet private keys, and no withdrawals initiated after breaching the company's system.
The suspension of withdrawals is described as risk control rather than a lack of liquidity. Chen is concerned that resuming withdrawals before the investigation concludes could exacerbate losses, with a time frame of a few hours to a few days, clarifying that "it should not take weeks." Deposits and trading have previously been announced to remain open, with the resumption of withdrawals running parallel to system fortification, without making unfulfillable promises.
The asset structure differs from the $320 million theft at Bybit in February 2025: it involves more chains and tokens. The largest single token is XRP, exceeding $100 million; a large amount of USDT, USDT0, USDC, and tokenized gold XAU has been exchanged, totaling about $170 million in ETH. The attackers quickly converted stablecoins and gold tokens that could be frozen by issuers into Ethereum, continuing the on-chain practice of "Ethereum being the main chain for hacker withdrawals."
The official protection fund still reports over $464 million, covering the $351.6 million accounting gap. Early on-chain statistics only showed about $180 million to $192 million flowing out, with the discrepancy from including more chains and tokens in the final count. The qualitative aspect of the signature machine being called by forged work orders aligns with the first round of statements, merely reducing the "supply chain doubts" from speculation to "the system was used for withdrawals, and the private keys are still intact."
In market mechanics, what is sold is the hot wallet withdrawal channel, and what is bought is Ethereum, an asset without an issuer blacklist. The user protection fund fills the gap on the ledger, while on-chain XRP and stablecoins have already left the platform address. Beneficiaries are users whose account balances have not been altered and can still trade, as well as the attack addresses that converted stolen funds into ETH; the pressured parties are customers wanting to withdraw and market makers who must maintain inventory during the suspension. Funds moved from hot/warm wallets through 19 transfers into attack addresses, then surged into ETH from stablecoin and XAU pools, with the platform using insurance funds to balance liabilities.
Source: Public Information
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Gracy Chen has advanced the incident from "hot wallet transfers" to "authorized workflows being called by internal systems." This is narrower than simply stating supply chain issues: the private keys and user credentials are still intact, and what was borrowed is the company's withdrawal approval chain. Bybit previously targeted Safe multi-signature front ends and signature pages, while Bitget this time targeted its own backend; the commonality is that the signing machine trusted a fake work order, while the difference is that the token basket expanded from primarily ETH to over $100 million in XRP, with the statistical scope also broadened to $351.6 million across more chains.
The capital path remains unchanged. Hot wallets must be online for end-of-day withdrawals, warm wallets replenish hot wallets, and cold wallets only move after manual approval. The attackers chose XRP and stablecoins due to their deep liquidity and large order books, losing the freeze switches of Tether, Circle, and gold tokens after converting to ETH. The $170 million in ETH is a purchase of "non-freezability," not a bet on Ethereum's fundamentals.
Similar comparisons still include Bybit's $1.5 billion and the loss of hot wallets during the Mt. Gox era, as well as a series of breaches by vendors or operational tools in centralized custody. The industry remains at the same stage: keys can be cold-stored, but withdrawal instructions cannot. Whoever can clarify which API can still call the signing machine without restoring withdrawals will be able to keep the $351.6 million in the insurance fund, rather than it becoming a second wave.
Structural judgments belong to the authority reconstruction before regulatory changes. The exchange's commitment to users has shifted from "cold wallet proportion" to "who has the authority to sign withdrawal work orders." The mechanism is: 19 transfers prove that the hot/warm layer is sufficient to cover a medium-scale heist, the protection fund proves that its payout capability temporarily exceeds the theft amount, and ETH exchanges prove that the pricing power of stolen funds lies on permissionless public chains. Suspending withdrawals is about redefining the input whitelist for the signing machine.
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The private keys are still intact, and the withdrawal button can also be pressed by others.
Stablecoins fear blacklists, and the endgame for stolen funds is ETH.
Insurance funds can fill the gap, but cannot cover the time of withdrawal suspension.