Bybit was attacked $1.5 billion of cryptocurrency was stolen or the largest theft in the coin world

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has been hacked, and analysts estimate the incident resulted in the theft of nearly $1.5 billion in tokens, making it the largest theft in industry history. Researchers believe the attack may be linked to a North Korean hacking group.

Bybit President Ben Zhou posted on social media X on Friday (February 21) that hackers took control of one of the platform's offline Ethereum wallets. According to a Telegram post by on-chain analyst ZachXBT, about $1.46 billion in assets were taken out of wallets through a series of suspicious transactions.

Research firm Arkham Intelligence also confirmed outflows of about $1.4 billion, saying in a post on X that "these funds have started to be moved to new addresses and sold."

The attack has been called the largest cryptocurrency theft in history by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, surpassing the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021.

Rob Behnke, co-founder and executive chairman of blockchain security firm Halborn, said it is likely to be "the biggest event in history, and not just in the cryptocurrency space."

In order to ease customers' concerns, Zhou Ben explained the situation to the public through live streaming platforms. He said the exchange had applied for a bridge loan from its partners and had secured about 80% of the funds to cover the loss. In the meantime, Bybit will attempt to recover the stolen funds and take the necessary legal action against the hackers.

"Your funds are safe and withdrawals are still normal," Zhou said in the livestream. He also added that the exchange has processed more than 70 percent of the withdrawal requests. He also said that currently Bybit has not purchased any Ether to cover the stolen assets on the platform.

Founded in 2018, Dubai-based Bybit is one of the world's largest cryptocurrency trading platforms with an average daily trading volume of over $36 billion. According to CoinMarketCap's reserve data, the platform had about $16.2 billion in assets before the attack, and the stolen ether accounted for about 9 percent of its total assets.

Bloomberg reported in June last year that Bybit jumped to second place in global trading volume, in part by filling the void left by the collapse of the FTX exchange with a service that allows digital tokens to be traded as margin.

According to data from research firm Nansen, the funds stolen from Bybit on Friday included about $1.12 billion in ether, with the rest in ether derivatives such as stETH. According to Nansen, the tokens were initially transferred to one wallet and then spread across more than 40 wallets.

The attackers converted all ether derivatives into ether and transferred them to more than 10 wallets in increments of $27 million at a time. Nansen added that many wallets that receive tokens still have funds stored in them.

Arkham Intelligence blamed the attack on the North Korean hacking group Lazarus and said cryptocurrency researcher ZachXBT had provided conclusive evidence that the group was behind the hack.

Following the event, ether prices fell nearly 8% from the day's high. Other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin also fell, with bitcoin falling nearly 5% from its peak of the day. At the time of writing, the decline narrowed to 0.5%.