Original author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Original editor: TB, ChainCatcher
Within 12 hours after nearly $1.5 billion was stolen, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said the withdrawal system had fully returned to normal.
In the face of the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrencies, in addition to the Bybit team’s textbook crisis and public relations handling, all parties supporting Bybit are also alleviating tremendous pressure on the crypto ecosystem.
With a support of 320 million US dollars, who are the white knights everyone is talking about?
As of press time, according to Ember’s monitoring, 5 institutions and individuals have provided loan support to Bybit, totaling about 120,000 ETH, worth about $321 million. Specifically:
Bitget: Support and support 40,000 ETH loans to ease withdrawal pressure
This morning, Bitget provided a loan of 40,000 ETH (US$105.9 million) to Bybit to tide over the withdrawal surge after the ETH theft. These ETH were directly transferred from Bitget to the Bybit cold wallet address.
Bitget CEO Gracy later tweeted that Bybit is a respectable competitor and partner. Although the loss this time is huge, it is only their annual profit. I believe that customer funds are 100% safe and there is no need to panic or run. He then added that the assets lent to Bybit are Bitgets own and user assets will not be moved.
MEXC: Provide 12,652 stETH
This morning, Embers monitored that the MEXC hot wallet transferred 12,652 stETH (about 33.75 million US dollars) to the Bybit cold wallet.
Other whale investors: Total support of nearly $200 million
11,800 ETH (about $31.02 million) from institutions or whales that withdrew from Binance; 36,000 ETH (about $96.54 million) from Binance or another institution/whale that withdrew from Binance; and 20,000 ETH (about $53.7 million) from address 0x327...45b.
In addition to the above-mentioned institutions or whale investors who provide real money, many CEX peers or institutions have also continuously supported Bybit, including:
OKX: Adding Bybit hackers to the blacklist can provide security and liquidity support for Bybit
OKX President Hong Fang said that the Bybit hacker addresses have been added to OKXs blacklist, and engineers will closely monitor these addresses and take immediate action if there is any flow of funds.
The team at OKX is also in touch with the Bybit team to provide any IT security support and liquidity support that can be provided to them at this time.
HashKey: Supports Bybit and believes the security incident will be properly resolved
HashKey condemned the hacker’s illegal behavior on its official Twitter account and expressed its belief that Bybit’s security incident will be properly handled and overcome.
BitMart: Freeze hacker addresses, founder Sheldon said Bybit will provide support if needed
Sheldon, the founder of BitMart, posted on the X platform that the relevant addresses have been frozen. Once the stolen assets flow into BitMart, the relevant assets will be frozen immediately to support the recovery work.
He pointed out that the cryptocurrency industry is a community of shared destiny, and the most important thing in this industry is credibility. We hope to work together to help Bybit recover its losses and regain its assets. This industry needs everyone to protect it together.
Justin Sun supports Bybit and promises to help trace funds
Justin Sun, global advisor of Huobi HTX and founder of TRON, said, “We have been paying close attention to the Bybit incident and will do our best to assist our partners in tracing the relevant funds and provide all support within our capabilities.”
JuCoin: Provide 1,000 BTC industry co-construction fund and technical support for Bybit security incident
In response to Bybit’s recent security incident, JuCoin announced that it would provide 1,000 BTC as an industry co-construction fund and open advanced security technology services for free, including threat detection, smart contract auditing, hot and cold wallet management, and multi-signature technology implementation, to fully protect user asset security and platform stable operation.
At present, Bitget is the institution that has provided the most help to Bybit with real money. (Please contact ChainCatcher to add more supporters.)
In response to this, Conflux co-founder Yuanjie tweeted to praise Bitget for its vision. He also speculated that the reason behind this might be that Bitget and Bybit have common shareholders.
As for other exchanges or whales who expressed support but did not take any real action, he estimated that they were in intense negotiations for interests. He called on all parties to reach an agreement as soon as possible, and Bybit could dilute some shares and guarantees to help Bybit and its users tide over the difficulties.
Yuanjie believes that ideally, the important participants in the industry will be able to use their accumulated surpluses to the greatest extent possible to form a common moat to resist risks, including but not limited to external sudden shocks such as hackers, cycles, and technology wars and politics!
The interview with Ben is just around the corner. What exactly drives Bybit to handle the crisis in an orderly manner?
Regarding the theft crisis, crypto investor @26x14eth wrote that he felt Bybit had good organizational capabilities and cultural cohesion.
ChainCatcher also sensed this during the interview.
During the Hong Kong Consensus Conference a few days ago, we had a brief exchange with Bybit CEO Ben Zhou.
When we asked CEX how to transform and build the Onchain ecosystem, Ben Zhou said frankly that they were a little confused at the moment. They were not sure about the Web3 wallet, which was burning money and difficult to generate revenue in a short period of time, and they were still exploring other on-chain directions. They might form an active team of young people who play on the chain and let young people try it out.
Nothing particularly official.
He also joked in a public interview before, He should be the only founder of a large exchange who can speak out and accept interviews.
Looking back now, Bybit’s ability to handle this major crisis in an orderly manner may be related to its style of being able to face itself and others sincerely.
In December last year, when KOLs questioned Bybit’s insider trading and girlfriends group, Ben Zhou directly responded to them one by one in an AMA before public opinion had time to ferment. This time, the theft occurred, and he also broadcast live overnight. Ben Zhou first shared the cause of the accident, saying that there was a problem when signing, but I didnt pay attention, and the delivery address was not displayed when signing. In addition, he also synchronized the Bybit run and treasury situation that everyone was most concerned about.
In fact, no matter how strong or weak the support is, or what the result is, at least the market hasnt seen such positive energy for a long time. Especially in the past six months, many investors have complained that the industry is in garbage time, helpless and powerless.
After the Bybit theft, we seem to see the return of Cryptos centripetal force from the crisis.
