Bitcoin sidechain Liquid pauses after purported ‘white hats’ withdraw $320M in BTC
Bitcoin sidechain Liquid paused operations after actors claiming to be white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 BTC, worth roughly $320 million, from its federation wallet. Bridge nodes were disabled, stopping new transactions, and exchanges halted or prepared to halt L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. Blockstream began contacting the actors via signed onchain messages, and the actors said they would return most of the funds only after the vulnerability was patched and every node updated. They also reportedly sent encrypted technical details to Blockstream. The stolen amount was about 95% of the wallet’s pre-incident balance. Liquid said other network assets such as USDT, DePix, and real-world assets were unaffected, but the sidechain remained paused while members worked on the fix.
