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Bitget halts withdrawals after a hack the exchange blames on North Korea

Reported losses range from $350 million to $387.5 million, and only about $318,000 has been frozen.

Assembled by Claude from 9 sources at 9 outlets · Saturday, September 26, 2026, Morning edition, 10:27 AM EDT · no human byline

Disclosure. This item was assembled by an AI from the RSS excerpts of the outlets tagged inline. No human wrote or checked it before publication. Feed selection and categories are editorial choices by Teresa Lo. Nothing here is investment advice.

What happened

The crypto exchange Bitget paused customer withdrawals after a hack, with Reuters reporting $350 million stolen reuters.comwhbl.com. Bitget suspects North Korea is responsible, in an account that sizes the theft at $352 million cnbc.com. Other reports put the figure at more than $351 million logos-pres.md and at $351.6 million binance.comtradersunion.comcrypto.news, while two accounts describe $387.5 million as the amount involved cryptopolitan.comhokanews.com.

Recovery so far is marginal. Circle and Tether froze about $318,000 in USDC and USDT linked to the hack cryptopolitan.com, blocking a wallet tied to the theft tradersunion.com. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao offered public support to Bitget, posting on X that Binance and the BNB Chain ecosystem would help binance.comhokanews.com. Reuters set the episode against the failure of the exchange FTX in 2022 reuters.com.

Why it matters to investors

The size of the loss is disputed by a wide margin. The spread between $350 million reuters.com and $387.5 million cryptopolitan.com is itself information: it indicates that the exchange and outside observers are still reconciling what left the platform, which is the same uncertainty facing customers whose withdrawals are suspended crypto.news.

The frozen sum shows the limits of stablecoin controls after the fact. About $318,000 was trapped against a loss measured in hundreds of millions tradersunion.comcryptopolitan.com, so the enforceable claw-back is a rounding error on the theft. That leaves the exchange's own balance sheet, and the industry support Zhao has offered binance.com, as the route to making customers whole hokanews.com.

State attribution changes the character of the risk. If North Korea is responsible cnbc.com, exchange security becomes a sanctions and national-security matter as well as an operational one, which is the framing regulators have applied to earlier failures in the sector reuters.com.

What to watch

When withdrawals resume and on what terms. The suspension is the immediate exposure for customers crypto.newswhbl.com, and the reopening will indicate whether Bitget is absorbing the loss itself.

The attribution is the second open question. Bitget has said it suspects North Korea cnbc.com rather than confirmed it, and the identification of the wallet that stablecoin issuers blocked tradersunion.com is the kind of on-chain evidence that either supports that claim or does not cryptopolitan.com.

Whether the loss figure settles. A final number closer to $387.5 million rather than $351.6 million would mean a materially larger hole hokanews.comtradersunion.com. Prices have not so far reflected distress in the wider market: bitcoin topped $87,000 in the same week, as exchange-traded fund inflows returned and the Federal Reserve proposed stablecoin rules crypto.news.

Sources

  1. reuters.com: Crypto exchange Bitget pauses withdrawals after $350 million stolen in hack - Reuters (2026-09-25)
  2. cnbc.com: Crypto platform Bitget suspects North Korea is responsible for $352 million hack - CNBC (2026-09-25)
  3. whbl.com: Crypto exchange Bitget pauses withdrawals after $350 million stolen in hack - WHBL (2026-09-25)
  4. cryptopolitan.com: Circle and Tether freeze $318K of Bitget hack funds as $387.5M slips away - Cryptopolitan (2026-09-25)
  5. logos-pres.md: The Bitget cryptocurrency exchange was hacked and lost over $351 million - Logos Press (2026-09-25)
  6. binance.com: CZ Widens the Circle of Support Around Bitget's $351.6 Million Breach - Binance (2026-09-25)
  7. hokanews.com: CZ Offers Support to Bitget After $387.5 Million Security Incident - Hokanews (2026-09-26)
  8. tradersunion.com: Circle, Tether freeze small share of Bitget hack proceeds - Traders Union (2026-09-25)
  9. crypto.news: Bitcoin tops $87K, Fed drafts stablecoin rules, Bitget hit by $351M hack | Weekly recap (2026-09-26)