Bybit’s CEO revealed that Bybit had almost closed down its $1.4 Billion crypto exchange. Ethereum One of the biggest hacks ever in cryptocurrency history caused a deficit (ETH).
Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, acknowledged in a Tweet the findings from Lookonchain, an on-chain analysis platform. "Latest update: Bybit has already fully closed the ETH gap."
The latest update: Bybit’s merkle tree is back to 1:1 with client assets. https://t.co/QLa1vOujM6
— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 24, 2025
According to Lookonchain, the exchange acquired a total of 446,870 ETH—worth approximately $1.23 billion—through a combination of loans, whale deposits, and direct purchases, allowing the platform to replenish nearly 88% of funds stolen in last week’s hack.
Last Friday, the crypto market was rocked by the news that North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus hacking group had exploited a vulnerability in Bybit's Ethereum cold wallet, draining $1.4 billion worth of ETH and stETH.
CoinGecko data shows that Ethereum dipped by 3.3% in the past 24 hours to $2,707, while Bybit's total assets currently stand at $10.81 billion, per data from DeFiLlama.
Zhou’s tweet also promised users that Bybit would soon release a proof of reserves report, which will demonstrate that the client assets have been fully restored with a backing 1:1 using Merkle trees, an information structure that blockchains use to store transactions data.
Lookonchain found a wallet that was linked to Bybit on Sunday. "0x2E45…1b77," The company purchased 157.660 ETH in transactions over the counter for $437.6 million. The first transaction was on February 22, 2019.
These funds were acquired through a variety of channels including purchases made by crypto-investment firms Galaxy Digital FalconX and Wintermute.
It also indicated that another wallet was involved. “0xd7CF…A995,” The exchange has been able to reduce its deficit by purchasing an extra 304,000 ETH.
Bybit’s wallet contained transactions that were linked to Binance, MEXC and other exchanges. This made it obvious that Bybit was relying on OTC trading and leveraging other trading channels to retrieve the stolen funds.
The attack by Lazarus Group severely affected the exchange’s reserves. Bybit saw massive withdrawals of up to $5.3 billion in a single day.
Bybit quickly moved to reassure market participants that it had sufficient reserves to cover its losses.
After the hack, Lazarus Group transferred the funds to various privacy protocols and decentralized exchanges, which made it difficult for the authorities to track the assets.
In order to conceal the fraud, stolen funds was split between multiple accounts and funneled via different platforms.
Elliptic is a Blockchain-based intelligence company that tracked more than $140 Million of stolen funds. BitcoinThis will complicate recovery efforts.
Bybit praised its industry partners for the quick response they provided, such as Tether Circle and THORChain. They were able to freeze over 42,89 millions dollars of stolen funds.
"Respect to their teams for their timely responses," On Sunday, the firm tweeted that they had been contacted by the company. “helped us monitor and block the blacklisted addresses.”
