Liquid recovers 3,400 BTC as hacker asks "is that ok?" after pocketing $47 million in Bitcoin

Bitcoin's Liquid sidechain received 3,400 BTC back into its federation wallet on Sept. 7 after a reserve drain. The partial recovery restores assets behind L-BTC, its Bitcoin-linked token, while withdrawal access remains unconfirmed and public bridge nodes are still listed as experiencing a major outage.

The recovery transaction confirmed at 16:09:25 UTC in Bitcoin block 965950. By press time on Sept. 8, Blockstream’s status page still listed an active Liquid security incident and a major outage affecting public bridge nodes.

That leaves holders with two separate questions: how much Bitcoin is available to back their tokens, and when they can redeem them.

Before the repayment, the self-described white-hat hackers wrote in an on-chain message that they were “sending most back” to Liquid’s federation address, asking “is that ok.”

The subsequent transaction returned 3,400 BTC to the federation wallet and sent approximately 598.5 BTC, worth roughly $47 million at the time, back to the hackers’ address. The public evidence reviewed does not establish that this retained amount was an agreed bounty.

CryptoSlate’s earlier coverage put the original federation outflow at approximately 3,996 BTC. The later recovery transaction spent approximately 3,998.5 BTC from the holder address.