Bitget Users Pull 4,000 Bitcoin (BTC) in First Hour After Hack

4,000 BTC Leaves Bitget in an Hour

Users withdrew more than 4,000 Bitcoin (BTC) — about $334 million at the time — from Bitget within the first hour after the exchange reopened customer withdrawals this week, chief executive Gracy Chen said. Company figures show 9,585 orders totaling 4,098 BTC cleared in that opening hour before flows stabilized. The rush followed last week's breach that drained $388 million from the Victoria, Seychelles-based platform's hot wallets, an attack Bitget said was highly consistent with known patterns of North Korean hacker organizations. Cold-storage funds were untouched: attackers exploited third-party vulnerabilities to steal internal credentials and push fraudulent withdrawal commands past risk controls. Running phased withdrawals, Bitget is replenishing its protection fund, which fell from $464 million to below $200 million — its first security incident of this nature in eight years. For custody track records, see our best crypto exchanges guide.

A Quiet Leverage Flush

Derivatives positioning tells a calmer story. Aggregate open interest across CME futures and perpetuals fell by roughly 49,000 BTC over one week — the steepest weekly decline since October 2025 — yet the unwind came without a liquidation wave. Perpetual funding rates cooled in step, while spot prices held near $84,070. Open interest now sits near $52.89 billion; 24-hour futures volume reached $56.25 billion against just $67.6 million in liquidations. Part of the drop is mechanical: the monthly CME contract expired on September 25, so fading CME positions are not direct evidence of institutional exit. Unlike the October 10, 2025 flush that erased over $19 billion in positions, this looks like gradual deleveraging. The flow backdrop stays supportive too, as our $2.4 billion weekly ETF inflows report detailed.

Rotation is already reshaping where liquidity sits. Bitcoin dominance slipped below 59%, its lowest reading of this cycle — the threshold analysts traditionally treat as a signal for capital to rotate into alternative assets. Funds have begun migrating from BTC toward Ethereum and other large-cap assets, accompanied by rising daily turnover and firm spot buying across promising projects. Notably, the dominance slide arrived without any price breakdown, which historically flatters market breadth rather than signaling distress. Published technical work expects altcoins to outperform in this phase while BTC holds a stabilizing or mildly upward path, a precondition for the rotation to extend over coming weeks. Our Altcoin hub tracks the leading movers.

Momentum Cools at the Top

Analytics firm CryptoQuant's weekly report argues the new bull market remains intact but is showing early-stage overheating. BTC briefly printed $87,400 — its highest level in eight months — yet several gauges signal fading momentum. Traders' on-chain unrealized profit margin sits at 33%, the highest since December 2024; historically, sharp profit-margin expansion has preceded selling pressure. Profit-taking has already begun: holders realized 25,700 BTC of gains on September 22, the largest single-day tally of 2026. Altcoin deposits to exchanges also surged, reaching 76,000 transactions from 51,000 addresses over seven days — levels last seen in October 2025 and typically read as preparation for distribution. Estimated spot demand contracted by 170,000 BTC over the past 30 days, while speculative futures demand slowed from plus 164,000 BTC on September 14 to plus 16,000 BTC.

Institutions Build Around the Asset

The institutional story points the other way. A TD Cowen research note covering the September 28 Bitcoin Treasury conference in New York concludes the debate has shifted from whether to hold BTC toward the ecosystem being built around it — bitcoin-backed bonds, preferred shares, convertible securities and financing for treasury companies running a strategic bitcoin reserve. The evidence is concrete: Strategy disclosed on September 28 that it bought 1,665 BTC and repurchased $152 million of its STRC preferred stock. BlackRock representatives described ETF exposure and self-custody as complementary strategies serving different investors, while the SEC's July 2025 approval of in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETPs lets authorized participants swap qualifying crypto assets for fund shares directly. Executive chairman Michael Saylor has proposed letting banks custody BTC and lend against it.

Whales Keep Buying

On-chain data shows the other side of that trade. Santiment's on-chain dataset shows wallets holding 10 to 10,000 BTC — the whale and shark cohort — added 41,025 BTC in ten days, lifting the group's balance to 13.64 million BTC, roughly 67.93% of tracked supply and its highest level since the mid-August rally. Retail wallets holding under 0.01 BTC stayed flat across the same window, a clear behavioral split between the two classes. Santiment notes past accumulation streaks by this cohort have coincided with favorable BTC conditions, while stressing that the divergence is not, by itself, a price-forecast signal. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Santiment's on-chain datasethttps://x.com/SantimentData/status/2104993219444343004

A Pause, Not a Reversal

COINOTAG's read of the week: leverage is draining quietly, dominance is slipping and momentum gauges are cooling, yet the deepest pockets keep accumulating and institutional rails keep expanding — consolidation, not a trend break. The load-bearing primary record is Bitget's own notice, which states “the incident remains contained, and no further unauthorized transfers are possible,” capping systemic spillover from the hack. CryptoQuant, whose composite Bull Score still reads 90 of 100, maps three supports for any correction: the 365-day moving average near $80,000 — the level that confirmed the bull phase last week — the 200-day average at $71,000, and traders' realized price near $67,000. With October rate-hike odds damped below 50%, as our earlier Fed coverage outlined, a hold above $80,000 keeps the bull structure intact.