Bybit immediately sought to reassure its customers that their cryptocurrency holdings were safe, while its chief executive said on social media that Bybit would refund all those affected, even if the hacked currency was not returned.
“Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed, we can cover the loss,” Ben Zhou, Bybit’s co-founder and chief executive, posted on X.
Bybit said the hack occurred when the company was making a routine transfer of Ethereum from an offline “cold” wallet to a “warm” wallet, which covers its daily trading.
The company has called on “the brightest minds in cybersecurity and crypto analytics” to help it try to recover the hacked funds, and is offering a reward of 10% of the amount recovered, which could total $140m if the entire hacked amount was retrieved.
Although the identity of the Bybit attacker is unknown, some reports have suggested that the perpetrators could be North Korean state hackers, such as the Lazarus Group, who have been blamed for previous large-scale heists, including the $615m theft from the blockchain project Ronin Group in 2022.
