Familiar fingerprints point to Kim’s government … to the surprise of nobody.
The CEO of crypto exchange Bitget has confirmed that a cyberattack with all the hallmarks of a North Korean operation resulted in about $387.5 million worth of digital assets being stolen from the exchange’s wallets.
Bitget at first estimated the loss at $351.6 million, but later revised the figure to $387.5 million after identifying more affected assets on Zcash and TRON that were not included in the initial estimate.
Blockchain intelligence company Arkham published its preliminary observations of the attack, estimating at the time that about $350 million was stolen and that $228 million left Bitget’s wallets in 18 minutes, between 18:58 and 19:16 UTC.
Arkham said $153 million worth of XRP was taken from a wallet it identified as a Bitget cold wallet, while the stolen assets also included $66.2 million of ETH, $34.8 million of USDT, $12.9 million of USDC, and $12.8 million of Tether Gold on Ethereum.
Chen said Bitget's cold wallets and customer balances remained unaffected, while its User Protection Fund held more than $464 million worth of assets.
Chen also explained that Bitget Wallet, the company’s self-custody product, operates on infrastructure separate from its exchange, and Bitget users can still make deposits and trade their tokens, despite withdrawals being temporarily suspended while more security checks are completed.
Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, said his company was on standby to “help in any way we can,” noting that Bitget helped it out following the $1.5 billion Bybit theft the FBI attributed to North Korea in February 2025.