Crypto Exchange Protection Funds Recalculated: What Really Covers Your Balance After the Bitget Hack

When a crypto exchange loses money, no government steps in. What protects your balance there is first a voluntary promise by the exchange, and second a liability rule from the European crypto regulation. The exchange can change the first one tomorrow; the second applies only if the exchange is authorised. The attack on Bitget during the night leading into September 25, 2026 is putting both on display.

So rather than rewrite what is being reported about the incident, we retrieved the protection promises ourselves and ran the numbers. This analysis was compiled by cryptoticker.io on September 25, 2026. The finding in one sentence: the largest in-house protection fund in the industry covers the damage from this single incident only 1.32 times over, and it is held in exactly the currency that falls along with the market in a crisis.

The Bitget hack of September 24, 2026: $351.6 million and suspended withdrawals

The exchange Bitget has confirmed that around $351.6 million flowed out of its hot and warm wallets on September 24, 2026. The company gives 18:31 UTC as the time of detection. According to chief executive Gracy Chen, no private keys were compromised; the attackers are said to have taken over a wallet backend, faked transaction data and thereby triggered the internal approval process. Withdrawals have been suspended since then, and the company describes its cold holdings as untouched. Chen has publicly voiced the suspicion that North Korean attackers were behind it, pointing to IP traces.