CASE STUDY | Symbiosis Bridge Paused Following Minting of Over 40 Billion in Fake Bitcoins

Cross-chain protocol, Symbiosis, has recovered about 15 bitcoin following an exploit of its native Bitcoin bridge but liquidity providers affected by the attack are still waiting for details on their losses and compensation.

The bridge remains paused while Symbiosis completes its accounting of the incident. Blockchain security firm, Blockaid, estimated the attackers generated about $336,000 in proceeds, although Symbiosis said the figure should not be treated as the final loss.

The scale of the exploit can be seen in the Blockaid report. The report says:

Signed BridgeV2 receive minted ~2^62 raw syBTC (8 decimals; face value ~46.1B) to a fresh EOA; same beneficiary dumped ~4.39 WBTC on Ethereum Uni V4.

The above figure shows the Symbiosis Bridge system minted raw units of sysBTC, the synthetic representation of Bitcoin, to a wallet on BNB Chain worth trillions in fake Bitcoins.

CASE STUDY | Bitcoin Settlement Network, Liquid, Hit by Over $300 Million Exploit

Symbiosis had offered a 20% bounty for the return of stolen funds with the recovery window ending on September 13 2026. The protocol said it would publish confirmed loss figures and further details once its investigation is complete.

Symbiosis said it was contacting affected liquidity providers directly and developing a compensation framework, with eligibility criteria to be announced later. The protocol has not yet said