Bybit Hit By Colossal $1.46 Billion Hack, Biggest Crypto Theft In History

A hacker took control of an Ether cold wallet on the centralized crypto exchange on Feb. 21, stealing roughly $1.5 billion in ETH-related tokens

A hacker made off with roughly $1.46 billion in ETH and stETH from Bybit on Friday, with a large portion of these funds being swapped on decentralized exchanges.

Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou confirmed the security incident in an X post, revealing that a planned transfer was manipulated by bad actors to siphon the funds.

“Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about 1 hr ago. It appears that this specific transaction was musked, all the signers saw the musked UI which showed the correct address and the URL was from @safe,” wrote Zhou.

“However, the signing message was to change the smart contract logic of our ETH cold wallet. The hacker took control of the specific ETH cold wallet we signed and transferred all ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address.”

Following the incident, Zhou assured users and the crypto industry that Bybit would be able to handle the loss.

“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,” he said, adding that all other cold wallets were secure and that withdrawals were proceeding normally.

Flashbots strategy head Hasu also noted on X that the hack would not cripple Bybit.

“If you want my serious take, Bybit has way more than 1.4 billion of revenue per year,” said Hasu. “They are good for the money and will make all customers whole. It doesn't matter for ETH because Bybit will honor customers’ ETH liabilities and buy back the assets on the open market.”

The sum stolen from Bybit on Friday is vast, even by crypto standards. According to decentralized finance (DeFi) commentator Patrick Scott on X, the hack "accounted for 16% of ALL previous crypto hacks."

This Bybit exploit is the largest of all time, representing 16% of ALL previous crypto hacks.pic.twitter.com/XWs6xZvmdm

— Patrick Scott | Dynamo DeFi (@Dynamo_Patrick) February 21, 2025

In 2024, Japanese exchange DMM was hit with the year's largest crypto hack when hackers pilfered Bitcoin to the tune of over $300 million at the time. Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX was also hacked for over $475 million in 2022.

Meanwhile, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao offered to assist Bybit and also suggested that the exchange halt all withdrawals as a standard security measure.

“Not an easy situation to deal with. Might suggest to halt all withdrawals for a bit as a standard security precaution,” said Changpeng. “Will provide any assistance if needed. Good luck.”