It was a tough day in the market but that’s nothing compared to what crypto exchange Bybit faced today.
The company confirmed that a wallet it was holding was drained of the equivalent of $1.5 billion in ethereum. It may be the largest theft of any kind, ever, at least in nominal terms.
“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,” wrote CEO Ben Zhou on twitter.
In a livestream, he said they were getting a bridge loan and I worry there will be a run on the exchange.
“Even if we experience a bank run, it’s not an issue,” he said.
Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit
Some online reports have traced the attack to North Korea and the same group behind the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge hack in 2022. That was for $620 million in ETH and USDC.
The largest fraud was the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme, which was valued at $65 billion.
In any case, the news hasn’t helped crypto sentiment with bitcoin down 3% today and ethereum down 4%. Considering the news, that’s not bad. There was a time when we would see both down more than 10% on this kind of thing.
In terms of the loss, it would be comperable to the Iraqi central bank robbery in 2002, which included the looting of about $920 million by Saddam Hussein’s son. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $1.5 trillion today.