Weekly Recap: Bitget's $387.5 Million Hack
Bitget lost $387.5 million from its hot wallets, Binance bought into Circle, and the Fed wrote capital rules for bank stablecoins
gm, Defiers!
Bitget's hot wallets sent about $387.5 million to attackers on Thursday afternoon, and the exchange has kept withdrawals switched off across every asset it lists since. It was the largest of five breaches this week.
Voting power bought for 20,199 USDC handed an attacker 11 Neutron contracts and kept the Cosmos Hub dark for almost 25 hours. Payy shut its payments network, cards included, over a forged $1.92 million withdrawal. Duelbits went offline after a $7 million hot-wallet drain, and old Magic Eden approvals let attackers pull NFTs and tokens until white hats moved 23,155 NFTs out of reach.
Binance bought $100 million of Circle stock at a 5% discount and signed five more years of the USDC fees Circle pays it. By Friday, Circle's CFO had announced he is leaving.
In their first full week under the SEC's exemption, tokenized stocks picked up an in-kind mint at Ondo, a 24/7 venue agreement between NYSE and Blockchain.com, a $500-minimum venture fund from ARK and a lending market at Aave. The Fed proposed capital rules for bank stablecoin issuers, and SEC staff published FAQs on buybacks and liquid staking.
Bitcoin touched $86,355 on Monday, its highest since January, and was back under the $86,000 ETF cost basis by Wednesday. Zcash cleared $1,600, a price it last saw in 2016.
Enjoy!
Synthetic vs. Direct Tokenized Stocks: Who Wins After The SEC Exemption?
Wednesday's stream took on the question under this week's Ondo, ARK and Aave launches: should a tokenized stock track a price, or be a claim on the share? Cooley partner Rodrigo Seira called the SEC exemption a five-year proof of concept, and Ondo's Peter Curley and Dinari's Gabriel Otte split over whether equity-linked notes clear the order's rights-equivalence bar. Watch the full conversation.
Top Stories This Week
Bitget Lost $387.5 Million From Its Hot Wallets And Froze Withdrawals
Bitget said unauthorized transfers hit a limited number of its hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on Thursday, first putting the damage at $351.6 million and suspending withdrawals across all 4,930 asset-network listings. On Friday it raised the estimate to about $387.5 million after adding Zcash and TRON assets to the count. Explorer records show roughly 102.98 million XRP and 31,890 ETH leaving Bitget-labeled wallets, and Arkham traced the ether into eight fresh addresses holding about 68,300 ETH. Bitget says its User Protection Fund of more than $464 million covers the incident and the vulnerability is remediated. The same week, an attacker seized 11 Neutron contracts through a governance vote, and Cosmos Hub validators halted the chain and moved 1.23 million stolen ATOM out of the attacker's wallet on restart. Payy halted its network after a forged withdrawal, Duelbits lost about $7 million from its hot wallets, and legacy Magic Eden approvals cost holders at least $2.8 million.
Binance Bought $100 Million Of Circle And Kept Collecting Its USDC Fee
Circle issued Binance 1,237,011 shares at $80.84 in a private placement that closed Sept. 17, exactly 5% below that day's close, and signed a five-year deal under which it keeps paying Binance a monthly fee tied to USDC balances. The stake is about 0.5% of Circle's shares and is locked for two years; Circle's Binance-related distribution costs rose $152.1 million in 2025. The same week Circle opened bitcoin-backed USDC loans to Circle Mint clients that run on Morpho, with Galaxy and Keyrock supplying nearly all of the dollars. On Friday it said CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen will step down by year-end, and co-founder Sean Neville left the board.
Tokenized Stocks Got An In-Kind Mint, A NYSE Deal And An Aave Market
Ondo opened in-kind creation and redemption, letting approved institutions swap shares held at Alpaca for tokens without funding the conversion in cash, then put three BlackRock-designed model portfolios onchain for non-U.S. investors. NYSE and Blockchain.com agreed to explore 24/7 access to tokenized U.S. stocks through NYSE's planned digital venue, which still needs regulatory approval. ARK put its venture fund on Ethereum at a $500 minimum, with exits still limited to quarterly repurchase offers of up to 5%. Aave began lending USDC against seven Coinbase stock tokens on Base, and Token Terminal's count of wallets holding tokenized stocks reached 4.3 million, led by BNB Chain.
The Fed Priced Bank Stablecoins And SEC Staff Took On Buybacks and Liquid Staking
The Federal Reserve proposed capital charges and an approval process for the stablecoin issuers it supervises: full reserves at all times, redemption within two business days, operational-risk capital starting at 2% of the first $20 billion outstanding, and a 120-day approval clock for bank subsidiaries. It would presume that yield routed through affiliates or white-label partners breaks the GENIUS Act's interest ban. SEC staff published FAQs saying buyback announcements for non-security tokens on functional networks do not promise essential managerial efforts, and treating qualifying staking receipts as non-securities; the answers carry no legal force.
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James sued Polymarket US as an unlicensed gambling business and asked for three times its gains.
Kalshi's ETH Perp Volume Ran On One Trade Size
The Defiant pulled 120,000 consecutive trades from Kalshi's ether perpetual and found 47.2% of them, carrying 62.75% of notional, clustered at a single dollar value of about $5,425, repeating roughly 96 times a minute, while the contract turned over more than 60 times its open interest. Kalshi, raising at a $40 billion valuation, denied faking its volume and said the trades came from one market maker it pays to keep resting orders on the book, losing money to hundreds of faster takers. It confirmed that Self-Clearing Members currently pay nothing to trade perps under a full fee rebate. It has named neither the maker nor said whether its affiliated trading arm, Kalshi Trading LLC, trades the contracts.
Other Stories
Vitalik Buterin Backs Trueo's Ethereum Move As TRUE Jumps 900% — Trueo said it will make Ethereum mainnet its primary deployment, and Buterin called the project "ethical and not corposlop." Its contracts still live only on Base, with no migration date set.
Zcash Clears $1,600 After 21Shares Launches European ETP — the physically backed product lists in Paris and Amsterdam, and a Wednesday snapshot put shielded ZEC at 29% of supply.
Bitcoin Cash Runs 27% on CME Futures Listing as Bitcoin Gives Up the Day — BCH gained 14% in the hour CME said it would list futures and closed up 27%. Uniswap, named in the same release, spiked 11% and gave the move back within two hours.
ZetaChain Votes to Wind Down Layer 1 and Move ZETA to Solana — Proposal 68 passed with 99.4% support, and a second vote will set the snapshot, claims and shutdown schedule once exchanges confirm the swap.
Fairshake Plans $30 Million Ad Blitz Against Sherrod Brown in Ohio — the super PAC's biggest 2026 commitment follows the failed 49-50 cloture vote on CLARITY; Brown could return as the top Democrat on Senate Banking.
a16z And DeFi Education Fund Ask SEC To Put DEXs Outside Exchange Registration — their joint letter to Commissioner Hester Peirce proposes a rebuttable presumption that DEX protocols and their front-ends fall outside the Exchange Act's definition of an exchange.
Morgan Stanley, Oliver Wyman See Tokenized Assets Reaching $2.3 Trillion by 2030 — collateral mobility carries about $1.7 trillion of the base case, with reserve and treasury management adding another $400 billion.
Trending on The Defiant
SEC’s Peirce Urges Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Reduce KYC Data Collection · REGULATION
Galaxy Adds $100 Million of sUSDS to Treasury, Approves It as Loan Collateral · DEFI
Arbitrum Replaces Timeboost With Per-Transaction Priority Auctions · BLOCKCHAINS
Only Four of Top 20 Crypto Treasury Firms Trade Above Holdings Value: DWF · TRADFI
Near Adds Ondo’s Tokenized Stocks With Confidential Execution · TRADFI
That's it for today — have a great weekend! If you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends!
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