Bybit Hack: North Korean Hackers Steal $1.46B in Crypto, Causing Market Crash

On Bybit, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, a recent hack has caused the worst damage ever worth 2 trillion won.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked on the 21st, and a large amount of coins, estimated at $1.46 billion (about 2.1 trillion won), were stolen. This damage is the worst ever, exceeding the damage of the Japanese exchange Mount Gox ($470 million) in 2014 and the Chinese exchange Poly Network ($611 million) in 2021.

According to Bloomberg and others on the 21st (local time), cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was robbed of $1.46 billion (about 2.1 trillion won) in coins through hacking. The funds hacked from Bybit are known to consist of Ethereum and Ethereum derivatives.

BiBit CEO Ben Zhou said on his social media that he "took over one of BiBit's offline Ethereum wallets." He added, "Most of the funds are safe. We will pay 10% of the recovered funds as a reward to those who helped us recover from the damage."

Blockchain data tracking platform Arkham Intelligence also reported the news, saying, "Hacked assets are being sold as they move to new addresses." The stolen Ethereum is equivalent to about 9% of the total assets of Bybit.

The hacking is considered to be the largest ever. Bitcoin's price collapsed by $95,000 on the news of the accident, and the bear market continued to trade around $96,000 until the afternoon of the 23rd.

Founded in 2018, Bybit is one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges with an average daily trading volume of more than 36 billion dollars (about 51.786 trillion won). At one point, it ranked second in the world after Binance in terms of trading volume.

It is headquartered in Dubai and had assets of about $16.2 billion before the hack.

As Bybit bet a bounty, blockchain analyst ZachXBT reportedly provided evidence that the incident was the work of North Korean hacking organization Lazarus.

"It is similar to the attacks on Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX and loan protocol Radiant Capital that occurred last year," said Fireblocks, a blockchain security company that is helping Bybit's investigation. "Both incidents were committed by North Korea."

North Korean hackers are blamed for hacking $234.9 million worth of virtual currencies from Wazir X and $50 million from Radiant Capital. North Korea is suspected of laundering virtual currency stolen by hacking virtual currency exchanges with cash in recent years and using it to develop nuclear weapons.

Last month, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan issued a joint statement and announced that North Korea was responsible for the $660 million (about 960 billion won) takeover of cryptocurrency that occurred last year.