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Coin prices are falling Friday following confirmation that major centralized crypto exchange Bybit was hacked after $1.4 billion worth of tokens were stolen in a hack.
More than $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum ($ETH) and stETH were withdrawn from Bybit's hot wallet on Friday, and a large chunk of the funds were being sold via decentralized exchanges.
Bybit co-founder CEO Ben Zhou confirmed the attack in a post on X (formerly Twitter), saying that a planned transfer was manipulated in some way and that the funds were swiped.
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 . However the signing message was to change…
— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 21, 2025
"However, the signing message was to change the smart contract logic of our $ETH cold wallet," said Zhou. "[The] hacker took control of the specific $ETH cold wallet we signed and transferred all $ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address."
"All other cold wallets are secure. All withdraws are NORMAL," Zhou added.
Ethereum is down nearly 3% on the hour to a current price of $2,727, while Bitcoin has dipped by nearly 1% to $98,091.
Editor's note: This story is developing and will be updated with additional details.