Bitget has officially offered a 10% bounty reward for anyone capable of tracking or freezing assets tied to the $351.6 million exploit that hit the exchange. The reward is divided into two equal parts: a 5% reward goes to parties that freeze stolen assets, while the remaining 5% is paid out if the stolen funds are successfully recovered and returned to the exchange.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen immediately called on the cybersecurity community to help hunt down the assets. The appeal is directed at security researchers, fellow crypto exchange operators, and independent on-chain investigators. Bounty participation can be monitored via a live tracking dashboard provided by Bitget or through the LazarusBounty initiative managed by exchange Bybit.
The bounty rules are not limited to new findings. Parties that took voluntary action earlier and have already frozen attacker assets are confirmed to be eligible for the bounty. The offer covers all ongoing and future recovery efforts across four key blockchain networks where the stolen assets have been tracked: Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Zcash, and TRON.
Early Action by Circle and Tether
Well before the bounty announcement was published, the world’s two largest stablecoin issuers had already stepped in to cut off the attacker’s access. Circle and Tether took early action by freezing assets worth a combined $318,000 - consisting of 99,990 USDC and 218,023 USDT - held in the attacker’s wallet addresses. This freezing measure severed the perpetrator’s access to a portion of liquid assets amid the massive scale of the theft.
Why Ripple Cannot Stop the Hacker’s XRP
Amid inter-exchange coordination, the attacker has been racing against time to obscure the asset trail. The hacker has reportedly moved around 54 million XRP out of the 103 million stolen XRP tokens. This XRP stash, valued at approximately $83 million, has now flowed out of five primary holding accounts previously used by the attacker.
The movement of tens of millions of dollars in assets has sparked questions about the role of the network’s developers. Why didn’t Ripple simply hit a pause button and freeze the hacker’s wallets? The answer lies in technical limitations at the network’s base layer. While the XRP Ledger system allows secondary token issuers to freeze their issued tokens, native XRP lacks a similar feature. Due to the absence of a native freeze mechanism, Ripple has no technical ability to halt the hacker’s transfers.
The pursuit of the remaining assets now hinges entirely on how quickly on-chain investigators respond to the 10% incentive before the attacker disperses the funds even further. Source: crypto.news.
Previously: Hacker Steals $351.6M from Bitget Without Touching Private Keys - How the Attacker Manipulated the System
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
