Bitget has resumed Bitcoin withdrawals, the exchange said, after a disruption tied to a hacker who swapped roughly $6 million in ETH for BTC through THORChain. The exchange didn't say how long withdrawals were paused or what the specific trigger was. THORChain, for its part, declined to block the hacker's transactions — a decision that put the cross-chain protocol at the center of the story even though it wasn't the party that got hacked.
What Bitget restored
Bitcoin withdrawals are back on. That's the headline for users who were stuck watching a pending queue. The exchange hasn't published a detailed post-mortem, and it hasn't said whether any other assets were affected. For now, the operational issue is closed on Bitget's side.
The silence on specifics is normal for exchanges in the first hours after an incident. It's also why the on-chain trail is doing most of the talking right now.
The THORChain route
The stolen funds didn't sit still. The attacker moved about $6 million worth of ETH into BTC using THORChain, a cross-chain liquidity protocol that lets users swap assets without a centralized intermediary. That's the point of THORChain — no one can freeze your funds, including the people running it.
THORChain declined to block the transactions. Read that again: the protocol had the choice and passed. That's consistent with how decentralized cross-chain infrastructure tends to operate. Blocking a specific wallet means someone, somewhere, gets to decide which transactions are legitimate. Once you do that, you're not really decentralized anymore — you're just a slower exchange.
The trade-off is obvious. A hacker gets a clean exit route, and the victim exchange gets to explain to users why the money is gone.
Why this keeps happening
Cross-chain swaps are the preferred laundering path for a reason. They break the on-chain link between the source of funds and the destination asset. ETH goes in, BTC comes out, and the trail gets harder to follow — not impossible, but harder. THORChain isn't the first protocol to take this position, and it won't be the last.
The uncomfortable part for exchanges is that their security perimeter ends at their own walls. Once funds leave, the recovery options shrink fast. Law enforcement can trace. Chain analysts can tag wallets. But a protocol that won't freeze can't be compelled to freeze in the way a bank can.
What's still unanswered
Bitget hasn't said whether it's covering the loss from its own reserves, whether users were affected, or whether it's working with any law enforcement agency. The exchange also hasn't confirmed the size of the incident beyond the figure tied to the THORChain swap.
The next concrete thing to watch is whether Bitget publishes a fuller account of what happened — and whether THORChain faces any pressure to revisit its no-block stance. Neither has happened yet. Until then, the $6 million is somewhere in BTC, and the protocol that moved it has made clear it isn't going to help get it back.
