Uneasy Money: The $388M Bitget Hack Started With a Security Vendor

Kain Warwick (0:00)

So, as the society, we need to decide, do we think this is a good thing, that these hyperscalers need so much money, that they're so risky, that there is a lot of upside left when they hit the market, and that that risk, the trade-off space, is that they could go bankrupt and be worth nothing, and a bunch of retail people could lose $2 trillion. Are we willing to take that risk for the chance to give a bunch of retail people the chance to make $20 trillion?

My hot take is yes, absolutely. Yeah, like, let's go, right? Like, let's go. Like, the whole point of markets. Hey, everyone, I'm Kain Warwick and welcome to Uneasy Money because what happens on chain never stays on chain. Before we begin, here is a word from the sponsors that make this show possible.

SPEAKER_2 (0:41)

This episode is brought to you by 1inch Aqua, the shared liquidity layer from 1inch. Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills. See how it works at 1inch.com/aqua. Not listening to Bits and Bips yet? It's our weekly crypto and macro market show with Ram Allawalia, Austin Campbell and Chris Berkins. Search Bits and Bips and subscribe.

Before we get started, I want to ask you for something. We're making a bunch of decisions right now about Unchained. What we make next, when we go live, what we should be doing more of, and I'd rather hear from you before we make them than after. So we put together a survey. It takes just a few minutes, it's anonymous, and there's a box where you can tell me what we could be doing better. I read all the responses. The link is in the show notes, or you can snap the QR code on screen, or go to unchainedcrypto.com/survey. Thanks.

Kain Warwick (1:41)

All right. I'm here with my co-host, Taylor Monahan, security expert and awesome builder enablement at Ethereum Foundation. And this week we have a very special guest with us, Pablo Sabbatella, founder of Opsek. I think he's going to come in handy this week.

We got some stories. He's already tried to exploit us while we were backstage, sending us weird links and stuff. So just a bit of wargaming. Yeah, a bit of wargaming. Well played. Well played. He's got Austin's Clankers private keys.

Taylor Monahan (2:15)

It was just a little fishing test, okay, Kain? It's fine.

Austin Griffith (2:18)

Yeah, just a little test.

Taylor Monahan (2:20)

Just a simple test.

Kain Warwick (2:22)

All right. Welcome, Pablo. Thank you for joining us. Let's get into it. Our first segment is the Bitget hack, the 388 million dollar test of all of our shit, I guess, at this point. So for context on this, I think it was about 48 hours ago. Is that the last time you slept, Teh?

Yeah.

Taylor Monahan (2:47)

I think longer than that, right?

Kain Warwick (2:49)

Longer, like 70 hours.

Taylor Monahan (2:51)

Isn't it like another Saturday hack?

Kain Warwick (2:53)

I don't know. I can't remember.

Taylor Monahan (2:54)

I don't know, actually.

Kain Warwick (2:56)

So a few days ago, three or four days ago, there were some strange transactions that people noticed coming out of Bitget.

We'll get into the details of exactly what happened and what we think the underlying cause was. But it was a bit weird because it was like one transaction, then a bit of a delay, then another transaction. And so, like always with these things, people start speculating and trying to figure out like what happened and where the money was going and which addresses, was it hot wallets, cold wallets, cold storage, private keys. But I think the headline is that almost $400 million was stolen from Bitget and then they're like, ah man, it's fine. Don't worry about it. We got lots of money. So it's all good. So that was-

Taylor Monahan (3:53)

They did actually. They said that. They literally said that.

It seems like it might actually be okay somehow. So we're doing better now.

Kain Warwick (4:03)

I guess there's a couple of options if you get a giant hack. You can go quiet and not say anything, or you can be like, ah, it's fine. We're really rich. We'll pay for it. Don't worry about it.

That's it, right? They picked the latter. They picked the latter. Yeah, so let's go through the, yeah, Pablo, go.

Pablo Sabbatella (4:24)

No, the buy-beat style, the same thing that Baby did, right? Going to a live, going live, making fun, making jokes, laughing.

Kain Warwick (4:35)

Yeah, get like a Lambo and light it on fire or something.