Bitget Pauses Withdrawals After $351.6 Million Hot Wallet Hack

Chief Executive Gracy Chen says the exchange's protection fund covers the full loss and cold storage is untouched. Bitget has not said how attackers got in or when withdrawals resume.

Alexander Lux

24/09/26 · 2 minSeptember 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Crypto exchange Bitget suspended withdrawals on Sept. 24, 2026, after attackers moved about $351.6 million out of its hot wallets, Chief Executive Gracy Chen said in a security notice on X.

Chen says customers will not incur any loss. She wrote that the full amount falls within Bitget's User Protection Fund, which she said holds more than $464 million. Until withdrawals return, though, anyone holding coins on Bitget cannot move them off the platform.

Bitget Says Cold Wallets Are Untouched

Bitget's systems flagged the unauthorized transfers at 18:31 UTC, according to Chen.

Hot wallets are the online wallets an exchange uses to pay out withdrawals, while cold wallets stay offline. She said the breach reached part of the hot and warm wallet layers, and the cold wallets "remain fully secure."

Deposits and trading still work, Chen said. Bitget has flagged the receiving addresses and notified law enforcement and on-chain security firms.

Blockchain analysts first tracked about $183 million moving to a single address, according to multiple industry reports. One fresh wallet swapped $19.67 million in USDT for 7,111 ETH on Arbitrum. The stolen funds included ETH, USDT, USDC, AVAX and BNB.

Bitget has navigated multiple market cycles. We will not run from this. Every dollar and every decision will be accounted for, transparently and in full.

Chen closed the notice with that pledge.

The Incident Report Comes Next

Bitget's protection fund page lists the fund as 5,500 BTC. It covers assets lost "due to events not attributable to their own actions," with claims "subject to the investigation results."

The breach is well short of the record. Bybit lost $1.4 billion in February 2025, Decrypt reported.

Crypto gambling sites face the same risk: FairGambling covered Duelbits confirming a loss of about $7 million in its own hack.

Chen promised hourly updates and a full incident report, including the root cause, within 24 hours of her notice. She said Bitget will not speculate on how the attackers got in before then, and she gave no date for restoring withdrawals.

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