BITGET SAYS SOMEBODY MOVED MONEY OUT OF ITS HOT WALLETS AND IT WILL NOT YET SAY HOW — THE REPORTED LOSS RAN FROM $183 MILLION TO $352 MILLION INSIDE ONE HOUR

Bitget's systems flagged unauthorized transfers out of its hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026. Gracy Chen posted the notice at 21:30 UTC. That is just under three hours in which the exchange knew and its customers did not. “Estimated funds affected: approximately $351.6 million.” Withdrawals are paused. Deposits and trading are not.

Watch what the number did. Decrypt published $183 million at 21:15 UTC, counting coins as they moved, fifteen minutes before Bitget said anything at all. Bitcoin.com carried $351.6 million. CoinDesk carried $352 million and then changed its own headline from loses to says affected. One event, several figures, and the only one sourced to the company is the one the company calls an estimate.

The architecture is not in dispute. Bitget says it runs three tiers and that the breach reached the hot and warm layers while the cold layer held. That is the design behaving exactly as designed. Hot wallets are online so that withdrawals can be fast, and online is where somebody else can reach them. Every customer whose coins sat in that layer was holding a promise from Bitget, not a key.

Chen says the loss fits inside a User Protection Fund holding over $464 million. It might. Nobody outside Bitget has seen what is in that fund, and the exchange has frozen the one button a customer could press to find out for himself. A full incident report is promised within 24 hours of the notice. Until it lands, the amount, the method and the coverage are three things Bitget has said. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $84,696.