Bitget Just Survived a $388M Hack — Then Watched $463M Walk Out the Door in 24 Hours

First, hackers took $388 million. Then customers took $463 million more. For crypto exchange Bitget, the last week of September has been the kind of week you don't forget — and the whole thing played out in public, on the blockchain, with anyone able to watch the money move in real time.

On September 24, Bitget suffered the worst crypto hack of the year: unauthorized transfers drained roughly $387.5–388 million from a limited number of the exchange's hot and warm wallets. Cybersecurity experts have reportedly linked the breach to North Korea — the same state-linked hacking apparatus blamed for some of the biggest crypto thefts in history — though that attribution remains reported, not confirmed.

Bitget suspended withdrawals while it reviewed its security. Then, early this week, it started letting the money back out — in careful stages. Bitcoin withdrawals restarted on Monday, September 28. Ether followed on Tuesday, September 29 at 08:00 UTC. Tether's USDT is scheduled for September 30, with other tokens, fiat and P2P services to follow on October 2. The exchange stressed that the staggered rollout was a security precaution "unrelated to the sufficiency or availability of user assets."

The market, apparently, was not reassured. In the 24 hours into Tuesday, as the gates reopened, Bitget saw roughly $463 million in net outflows — the largest single-day outflow since DefiLlama began monitoring the exchange's proof of reserves four years ago. Bloomberg reported the figure represented more than 10% of the company's reserves leaving in a single day.

A record run on the bank

Exchange outflows after a hack are nothing new — rattled users move their coins to self-custody as a reflex. But the scale here is historic. DefiLlama's reserve tracking, which has watched Bitget's wallets for four years, has never recorded a day like this one. More than one dollar in every ten that Bitget held in reserves moved out within a day of withdrawals resuming.

There is another number falling just as fast. Bitget has long pointed to a $464 million user protection fund as its backstop for emergencies. Bloomberg, citing the three wallet addresses Bitget itself identified as the fund's source, reports that the fund has now dropped below $200 million — less than half of what it once held. On-chain watchers, it seems, are tracking the safety net the same way they're tracking the exits.

Not everyone is running

Here's the twist: the panic isn't universal. When Ether withdrawals resumed on September 29, the first hour of flows told a very different story — 9,674 ETH flowed in against 9,023 ETH going out, a net inflow of roughly 651 ETH, according to data reported by BSCN. In other words, on the very asset whose withdrawals had just reopened, more crypto arrived than left.

That matters, because bank runs are as much about psychology as solvency. If a meaningful share of users still trust the exchange enough to deposit while others withdraw, the spiral can stabilize. Whether this first-hour data point becomes a trend — or just a blip before bigger withdrawals — will be decided in the coming days. Crypto traders will be watching the net-flow charts the way stock investors watch a ticker.

Bitget's answer: the numbers

For its part, the Seychelles-registered exchange is answering with transparency. On September 30, Bitget published its latest proof-of-reserves update — a snapshot taken September 29 at 09:00 UTC, right in the middle of the storm. The headline figure: an overall reserve ratio of 131% across 19 tracked assets, with every single asset above 100% — Bitcoin at 142%, Ether at 110%, USDT at 107%, and Solana at 157%.

It is the company's 47th such update since it began the program in December 2022. CEO Gracy Chen put it bluntly: "Proof of Reserves matters most when users want to see the numbers for themselves."

The question now is whether numbers are enough. Bitget survived the hack itself — the theft, while enormous, did not break the exchange. But trust, once drained, is harder to refill than a hot wallet. With $463 million gone in a day and the protection fund halved, the next proof-of-reserves snapshot will be the one to watch.