Bitget announced a phased return to normal operations following a hack that resulted in $388 million in user losses: on Friday, the exchange will resume withdrawals for all tokens. Access to BTC, ETH, and USDT has already been restored, and the company’s Protection Fund has reached $309 million.

Fund established in 2022 with 5,500 BTC

According to the company, the Protection Fund, created in January 2022 with 5,500 BTC, is intended to compensate users for potential losses that are "not the result of misconduct by the user or the platform itself." The fund’s assets are available for immediate use. “The Protection Fund was created for situations like this and has absorbed the financial impact of the incident,” said Bitget CEO Gracy Chen.

Exchange investigates and announces bounty

The company is considering both insider involvement and North Korean hackers as possible culprits. In response to the attack, a bounty program has been launched: 5% of frozen assets and 5% of any recovered funds will be awarded.

Movement of stolen ZEC

On Wednesday, wallets linked to the incident moved about $3.8 million in ZEC to the Ironwood pool on the Zcash network. This represents roughly 14% of the 18,917 ZEC stolen in the attack.

NEAR Intents also stated it has frozen $50 million connected to the Bitget hackers.