How Bitget Is Chasing $388 Million in Stolen Funds After a Zero-Day Hack

Bitget's $388M hack exposed how little of stolen crypto gets frozen industry-wide—just $632K so far—despite a well-funded protection fund covering users.

• Attack mechanics: Hackers exploited a zero-day in a third-party security product to insert fraudulent withdrawal commands into Bitget's internal wallet system, starting with sub-threshold test transfers (0.48 ETH, 93 TRX) before 17 large transfers totaling ~$361M across Ethereum, XRP, Zcash and other chains between 6:58–9:23 UTC on Sept 24.
• Mid-attack tradeoff: Bitget's risk system auto-blocked user withdrawals within 7 minutes, but CEO Gracy Chen's team briefly re-enabled wallet transfers to sweep hot/warm funds to cold storage, letting attackers steal another ~$30M in a second wave.

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