Bitget Confirms $351.6M Hot-Wallet Breach, Three Outlets Match the Figure

Bitget has confirmed that roughly $351.6 million moved out of its hot wallets without authorization, with the exchange, Bitcoin Magazine and CoinTelegraph all citing the same figure and the same detection time of 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026. That level of agreement across independently reported accounts is what separates a confirmed incident from a rumor still circulating on social feeds.

What three sources actually confirm

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen posted the first official acknowledgment on X, writing that the exchange’s “security systems detected unauthorized transfers from some of our hot wallets” and that emergency response protocols were activated immediately. Withdrawals were suspended platform-wide while the exchange investigates.

Chen said the breach was confined to a portion of Bitget’s hot and warm wallet layers, and that cold wallets, deposits and trading were unaffected. According to her remarks in a subsequent live Q&A, the assets pulled from the wallets included Ether, XRP, USDt, USDC, Avalanche, BNB and USDT0 on Arbitrum, spread across the Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Avalanche, BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks. Ethereum accounted for the largest concentration of the stolen funds.

Why the on-chain number moved

Early on-chain trackers had flagged a smaller figure than the $351.6 million Bitget ultimately disclosed. Chen attributed the gap to the incident’s scope extending beyond the Ethereum-side activity that initial blockchain monitoring had captured first. That distinction matters for anyone pulling numbers straight from a block explorer during a live incident: a partial snapshot of one chain is not the same as the aggregated total once an exchange traces movement across five networks.

Bitget said it has flagged the addresses tied to the transfers, notified law enforcement, and reached out to on-chain security firms to help trace the funds. User account balances remain accurate, and deposits and trading continue to operate normally, according to the exchange.

The buffer, and what’s still unverified

Chen said the exchange’s User Protection Fund, which she put at more than $464 million, covers the affected amount. She said Bitget expects to restore withdrawals within hours or days and has committed to hourly updates plus a full incident report with root-cause analysis once the review concludes.

Chen’s fuller framing of the response, posted alongside the technical detail, was direct: “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.”

One claim so far rests on a single source: Bitcoin Magazine, citing CoinGecko data, describes Bitget as the sixth-largest exchange by volume, processing over $1.1 billion in daily trading. That figure did not appear in the other two reports reviewed here, so it should be treated as reported rather than cross-confirmed. The root-cause report Bitget has promised, once published, will be the next document worth checking against multiple sources rather than a single press release.

The breach lands in a year already marked by a string of exchange and wallet incidents, including a firmware exploit against Coldcard hardware wallets that cost users close to $120 million in July. For now, the exchange’s own disclosed numbers, the 18:31 UTC timestamp, and the $464 million protection fund are the figures that hold up across independent reporting.

Sources

• bitcoinmagazine.com
• coingape.com
• cointelegraph.com