Bitget Halts Withdrawals After $351.6M Hot Wallet Breach
New York sues to shut Polymarket US, Ondo puts BlackRock portfolios onchain, and Payy goes dark after a $1.92M bridge drain
gm, Defiers!
These are the biggest stories in DeFi and crypto:
- Bitget suspended withdrawals across every asset after unauthorized transfers hit its hot wallets.
- New York sued Polymarket's U.S. exchange as an unlicensed gambling business and wants three times its gains.
- Ondo put three BlackRock-designed model portfolios onchain for eligible non-U.S. investors.
- Payy halted its whole network after an Ethereum bridge exploit moved $1.92M in USDC.
- Arbitrum retired Timeboost for per-transaction priority auctions and a paid Fast Feed.
Bitget's security systems flagged unauthorized transfers out of a limited number of its hot wallets at 18:31 UTC. Withdrawals have been off since.
The exchange put the affected total at $351.6 million and said cold wallets and the overwhelming majority of platform assets are unaffected, customer balances remain accurate, and the incident sits inside a User Protection Fund holding more than $464 million. Chief executive Gracy Chen posted the notice in English and then Chinese at 5:34 p.m. ET, promised hourly updates and said she was preparing a live stream to take questions.
The Defiant's tally of blockchain-explorer records comes to about $165 million moved into a single address across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism and Base, in ten transfers between roughly 2:59 p.m. and 4:09 p.m. ET. That count measures funds moved, and stops short of a verified loss. It also begins 28 minutes after the moment Bitget says it identified the transfers and continues for more than an hour past it. The receiving address is an externally owned account on all four chains.
Hours before any of it, Bitget moved institutional collateral into off-exchange custody at Swiss bank Sygnum, in segregated accounts held away from its balance sheet. That arrangement covers institutional collateral. Retail balances sat where they had always sat. The suspension now covers all 4,930 asset-network entries the exchange lists, and Bitget says it is working around the clock to turn withdrawals back on.
Read more below!
Synthetic vs. Direct Tokenized Stocks: Who Wins After The SEC Exemption?
Cooley partner Rodrigo Seira called the SEC's innovation exemption a five-year proof of concept built to survive the challenges coming from the Citadels of the world. Ondo's Peter Curley and Dinari's Gabriel Otte split over whether equity-linked notes clear the order's rights-equivalence bar, the same question sitting under today's Ondo launch.
Bitget Suspends Withdrawals, Says $351.6 Million Affected In Hot Wallet Breach
Bitget said unauthorized transfers hit a limited number of its hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on Sept. 24, put the affected total at $351.6 million and suspended withdrawals across every asset it lists. Cold wallets and the overwhelming majority of platform assets are unaffected, the exchange said, customer balances remain accurate, and the incident falls inside a User Protection Fund holding more than $464 million. None of the 4,930 asset-network entries returned by Bitget's public API were marked withdrawable at 5:30 p.m. ET or at 6:05 p.m. ET, while deposits stayed enabled and the ETH/USDT spot pair stayed online. Bitget has not published a breakdown of the $351.6 million, named the addresses it flagged, or described the attack vector. BGB traded at $1.98, down 2.8% on the day.
Streamex Is Emerging as a Proof Point for the Tokenization Supercycle
The tokenization supercycle gets more interesting when institutional capital starts using the assets being brought onchain.
Streamex Corp. (NASDAQ: STEX) now has a concrete example. Metalayer Capital, a systematic investment manager founded by former Two Sigma executives, is running a strategy that uses GLDY as the long leg of a delta-neutral gold trade.
A leading institutional investor is allocating an initial $1 million, with potential to scale with follow-on investments as the strategy demonstrates performance.
That is the broader thesis taking shape: tokenized assets are becoming financial building blocks, not just digital representations of traditional markets.
For Streamex, institutional utility is becoming the next growth layer.
New York Sues Polymarket US Over Unlicensed Gambling
Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court on Sept. 24 to bar Polymarket US from operating without a Gaming Commission license, and to award three times the company's gain, $100,000 for each sports wagering offer, restitution, disgorgement and a full accounting of bets and customer losses. The petition alleges the platform lets bettors as young as 18 open accounts, against a Racing Law minimum of 21, the same claim that anchored the state's July 31 suit against Kalshi. It cites contracts on the Sept. 3 Albany-Buffalo football game, which state law puts off limits, and quotes Polymarket marketing on X reading “TRADE EVERY FOOTBALL GAME IN ALL 50 STATES.”
Ondo Launches Tokenized Portfolios Built on BlackRock Strategies
Ondo Finance launched Ondo High Income, Ondo Diversified Growth and Ondo High Growth on Sept. 24, each running nondiscretionary model strategies from BlackRock Fund Advisors under the “Powered by BlackRock” name. The portfolios hold Ondo's own securities-backed tokens, one layer removed from the underlying shares: High Income tracks nine iShares bond ETFs, with 18% base allocations each to the High Yield Systematic and Investment Grade Systematic funds. BlackRock builds the models to Ondo's specifications, exercises no discretion over them and has no general obligation to update them after delivery. The tokens run on Ethereum and BNB Chain, with Solana listed as coming soon, and only eligible non-U.S. persons can mint or redeem.
Payy Halts Network After $1.92 Million USDC Drain
Payy, a privacy-focused stablecoin payments network, paused deposits, withdrawals, transfers and card transactions on Sept. 24 after two withdrawal batches moved 1,918,792.20 USDC out of its Ethereum bridge to one address, at 12:21 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. ET. Both batches called the bridge's verifyRollup function, and security firm ExVul said its preliminary analysis found a forged withdrawal mixed in among ordinary user withdrawals in the first one. The larger tranche went through UniswapX into roughly 683 ETH, then out to three wallets. Payy has notified law enforcement, exchanges and analytics firms, and has named neither the vulnerability nor a restart date.
Arbitrum Replaces Timeboost With Per-Transaction Priority Auctions
Arbitrum switched priority-fee collection on at 1:20 p.m. ET Sept. 23, retiring Timeboost's sealed-bid express lane and the 200-millisecond delay it imposed on everyone outside it. Bidders now use the standard EIP-1559 priority-fee field, with the sequencer ranking bids inside two 125-millisecond rounds per 250-millisecond block and handing waiting transactions a virtual boost so zero-tip traffic still clears. Fast Feed, a subscription settled in USDG, delivers ordered transaction data before the full block publishes, without granting execution priority. Both revenue streams keep Timeboost's split: 97% to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, 3% to the Arbitrum Developer Guild.
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Morgan Stanley, Oliver Wyman See Tokenized Assets Reaching $2.3 Trillion by 2030 — collateral mobility carries about $1.7 trillion of the base case, against a limited-adoption floor of $1.1 trillion and a widespread-adoption ceiling of $5.5 trillion.
SEC’s Peirce Urges Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Reduce KYC Data Collection — she wants attribute-based credentials wherever they are feasible, which would take a rule change or exemptive relief with the Treasury secretary’s concurrence.
Gnosis Pay Sets Dec. 20 Card Shutdown as It Shifts to B2B — Safes and Monerium IBANs keep working, sterling cardholders have no migration route yet, and GNO cashback ends Sept. 30.
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