Liquid ‘white hats’ return $270M in Bitcoin as network prepares restart

The actors returned 85% of the Bitcoin withdrawn from Liquid’s federation wallet following the security incident.

Purported white-hat hackers returned 3,400 Bitcoin worth about $270 million to the Liquid Federation wallet after withdrawing roughly $320 million from the Bitcoin sidechain’s reserves. 

On Monday, JAN3 CEO and former Blockstream executive Samson Mow said the return followed confirmation from Blockstream that the affected bridge nodes had been patched. He said about 598 BTC remains outstanding and that Blockstream continues to engage with the actors.

The return follows a Sunday security incident in which hackers withdrew about 4,000 BTC from the wallet’s roughly 4,200 BTC. Onchain records show that exactly 3,400 BTC was transferred back to the federation’s wallet address. 

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