Author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Editor: tree, ChainCatcher
Within 12 hours after the theft of nearly $150 million, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou stated that the withdrawal system has fully resumed normal operations.
Faced with the largest theft case in cryptocurrency history, in addition to the textbook crisis and public relations handling by the Bybit team, the supporters of Bybit are also helping to alleviate the tremendous pressure on the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
$320 million in support, who are the white knights that everyone is talking about?
As of the time of writing, according to Ember Monitoring, 5 institutions and individuals have provided loans to support Bybit, totaling approximately 120,000 ETH, worth about $321 million. Specifically, they include:
Bitget: Voiced support and provided a 40,000 ETH ($ 105.9 million) loan to alleviate withdrawal pressure
This morning, Bitget provided Bybit with a 40,000 ETH ($ 105.9 million) loan to get through the withdrawal tide after the ETH theft, and these ETH were directly transferred from Bitget's hot wallet to Bybit's cold wallet address.
Bitget CEO Gracy later tweeted that Bybit is a respectable competitor and partner, and although the loss is huge, it is just their annual profit, and he believes customer funds are 100% safe, so there is no need to panic or run.
MEXC: Provided 12,652 stETH
This morning, according to Ember Monitoring, MEXC's hot wallet transferred 12,652 stETH (about $33.75 million) to Bybit's cold wallet.
Other whale investors: Provided nearly $200 million in total
Institutions or whales that withdrew from Binance provided 11,800 ETH (about $31.02 million); Binance or another institution/whale that withdrew from Binance provided 36,000 ETH (about $96.54 million); and the address 0x327...45b provided 20,000 ETH (about $53.7 million).
In addition to the institutions or whale investors who provided real money, many CEX peers or institutions have also been voicing their support for Bybit, including:
OKX: Added the Bybit hacker to the blacklist and can provide security and liquidity support to Bybit
OKX President Hong Fang stated that the addresses of the Bybit hackers have been added to OKX's blacklist, and the engineers will closely monitor these addresses. If there is any fund movement, they will take immediate action.
OKX's team has also been in contact with the Bybit team to provide any IT security support and liquidity support they can currently provide.
HashKey: Voiced support for Bybit and believes the security incident will be properly resolved
HashKey condemned the illegal actions of the hackers on its Official Twitter, and stated that it believes Bybit's security incident will be properly handled and overcome.
BitMart: Froze the hacker's addresses, and founder Sheldon said he will provide support if Bybit needs it
BitMart founder Sheldon posted on the X platform that they have frozen the relevant addresses, and once the stolen assets flow into BitMart, they will immediately freeze the relevant assets to support the recovery efforts.
He pointed out that "the cryptocurrency industry is a community of shared destiny, and the most important thing for the industry is credibility. We hope to work together to help Bybit recover the losses and regain the assets. The industry needs everyone to guard it together."
Justin Sun voiced support for Bybit and promised to assist in tracking the funds
Huobi HTX Global Advisor and TRON founder Justin Sun said, "We have been closely following the Bybit incident and will make our best efforts to assist our partner in tracking the relevant funds and provide all the support within our capabilities."
JuCoin: Provided a 1000 BTC industry co-construction fund and technical support for Bybit's security incident
In response to Bybit's recent security incident, JuCoin announced the provision of 1000 BTC as an industry co-construction fund, and free access to advanced security technology services, including threat detection, smart contract auditing, cold and hot wallet management, and multi-signature technology implementation, to fully ensure user asset security and platform stability.
Currently, Bitget appears to be the institution that has provided the most real money to help Bybit. (Welcome to contact ChainCatcher to supplement the list of more supporters.)
Regarding this, Conflux co-founder Yuanjie praised Bitget for having a vision, and he speculated that the reason behind it may also be that Bitget and Bybit have common shareholders.
For other exchanges or whales that have voiced support but have not seen any actual action, he expects they are in tense negotiations of interests. He called on all parties to reach an agreement as soon as possible, where Bybit can dilute some equity and provide guarantees to help Bybit and its users get through the difficult time.
Yuanjie believes that "ideally, the key participants in the industry can form a common moat to the greatest extent possible by using their accumulated surpluses, to withstand risks, including but not limited to hackers, cycles, and external shocks such as technological and political wars!"
The interview with Ben is just around the corner, what is driving Bybit to handle the crisis in an orderly manner?
Regarding this theft crisis, crypto investor @26x14eth posted that he feels Bybit has good organizational capabilities and cultural cohesion.
This is something that ChainCatcher also sensed in the interview.
A few days ago during the Hong Kong Consensus conference, we had a brief exchange with Bybit CEO Ben Zhou.
When we raised the question of how CEXs should transform to build the Onchain ecosystem, Ben Zhou frankly said that they are currently a bit confused. They are not very confident about the Web3 wallets that burn money and are difficult to generate revenue in the short term, and they are still exploring other on-chain directions, and may form an active "chain-playing" team of young people to try it out.
Nothing too official.
He had also joked in a previous public interview that "he should be the only founder of a large exchange who can still speak out and accept interviews."
Looking back now, Bybit's ability to handle this major crisis in an orderly manner may be related to this style of being able to honestly face themselves and others.
Last December, when faced with KOLs' questions about Bybit's rat trading and clique, the public opinion had not yet had time to ferment on a large scale, and Ben directly held an AMA to respond one by one. When the theft incident occurred, he also opened a live broadcast overnight. In the live broadcast, Ben Zhou first shared the cause of the accident, saying that "there was a problem with the signing, but he didn't notice, and the signing didn't show the destination address", and he also synchronized the withdrawal situation and treasury situation that everyone was most concerned about.
In fact, the support from all parties, regardless of the depth and strength, and the outcome, the market has not seen such a positive event for a long time. Especially in the past half year, many investors have complained that the industry is in a "garbage time", feeling helpless and powerless.
But this time, after the Bybit theft incident, we seem to see the cohesion of Crypto returning from the crisis.
