Follow-up to the largest theft in the cryptocurrency world: Bybit offers a 1 billion reward

Source: Cailianshe Silicon Valley NEWS

Last week, Bybit, the world's second largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked, and a total of $1.46 billion in Ethereum was stolen, setting a record for the highest single token theft in history.

It is reported that the theft seems to be related to the hacker organization Lazarus Group. Hackers have controlled Bybit's wallet on Ethereum and transferred the tokens to an unknown address.

However, Bybit did not panic. Its co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou said that even if the losses caused by the hacker cannot be recovered, Bybit has the ability to pay, and all customers' assets are supported 1:1, so Bybit can make up for the related losses.

Zhou said that Bybit has $20 billion in reserve assets and can make up for any unrecovered funds on its own or through loans from partners.

According to the official announcement, Bybit has launched a "bounty recovery plan" to call on elites in the fields of global cybersecurity and crypto analysis to jointly track down the "culprit" of the largest theft in crypto history. Contributors who successfully recover the funds will receive a 10% reward, with the total bounty calculated based on the verifiable recovery of the stolen ETH, which was worth more than $1.4 billion at the time of the incident. If all funds are recovered, the total bounty could be as high as $140 million (about 1.015 billion yuan).

Bybit has more than 60 million customers worldwide and is the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. Since the news of the hack broke last Friday, the price of Ethereum has fallen by more than 4%, but has now almost recovered to its previous level.

On Monday, Ben Zhou pointed out that Bybit has fully recovered the loss of $1.4 billion in stolen Ethereum. According to blockchain company Lookonchain, Bybit has obtained 446,870 Ethereum worth $1.23 billion from channels such as loans and large holders.

In addition, after the hack, Bybit has ushered in a large number of customers requesting to withdraw funds. Ben Zhou said that there have been more than 350,000 requests to withdraw funds. As of last Saturday, Bybit's customer withdrawals have exceeded $5.3 billion.

At present, Bybit's reserves are still healthy and there is no liquidity risk.

Although Bybit has not been devastated by this, the theft still makes the entire industry vigilant. Binance co-founder Zhao Changpeng emphasized that the exchanges attacked by hackers all have different multi-signature solution providers, which means that the methods used by hackers are not targeted at a single supplier, but a systemic problem.

Industry executives suggested increasing the disclosure of transactions in the crypto industry and shifting from traditional multi-signatures to more secure architectures. At the same time, Bybit's quick approach to stabilizing investor sentiment was also praised.