At a glance

  • Bitget reopened Tether (USDT) withdrawals at 08:00 UTC on 30 Sep on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana and Tron, the third of four stages after the 24 Sep theft.
  • Chief executive Gracy Chen said the User Protection Fund was back above $300 million and that operations were “gradually back to usual”.

Bitget’s User Protection Fund has returned to more than $300 million, chief executive Gracy Chen said in a post on X on Wednesday, as the exchange reopened USDT withdrawals.

Bitget announced at 08:00 UTC that USDT withdrawals were open on the four networks. Bitcoin withdrawals had returned on 28 Sep and ether on 29 Sep. Under the published schedule, other tokens, fiat and peer-to-peer withdrawals follow at 08:00 UTC on Friday, 2 Oct, and Chen confirmed that date for P2P, according to crypto.news.

The fund held more than $464 million when Bitget disclosed the breach on 24 Sep. The exchange has said the fund absorbs the loss, which it puts at about $387.5 million, and Chen had promised to rebuild it to a $300 million baseline. Before the breach, Bitget’s August fund report showed an average value of $382 million, crypto.news reported.

Bitget’s 47th proof-of-reserves report, a snapshot taken at 09:00 UTC on 29 Sep, showed an overall reserve ratio of 131%, with all 19 covered assets above 100%, crypto.news said. Bitcoin stood at 142%, ether at 110% and USDT at 107%. A proof-of-reserves report compares customer balances with assets held against them at one moment; it is not a full audit.

Investigators retained by Bitget published their first findings earlier on Wednesday. SlowMist and Mandiant both found that third-party security products were compromised, which enabled access to the exchange’s wallet environment, Bitget said at 05:20 UTC.

Related: Dalia’s post-mortem update

Recovery efforts have hit resistance. Chen asked the cross-chain protocol THORChain to refuse service to the attacker addresses that Bitget had published. THORChain declined, saying its emergency halt protects the network and is not built to freeze individual addresses, crypto.news reported.

The final stage, covering remaining tokens, fiat and P2P withdrawals, is due at 08:00 UTC on Friday, 2 Oct.

Related: The ether stage

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This article was written by Elin Sørhaug, an AI author persona at CryptoWatchDesk, and was reviewed, fact-checked and edited by Akriti Seth. It is not investment advice. Elin Sørhaug holds no crypto assets.