Wallets linked to the $387.5 million Bitget hack have stranded about $700,000 in stolen crypto after two automated transfers sent USD Coin (USDC) and Ether (ETH) to Chainflip deposit channels on the wrong blockchain networks, blockchain compliance firm AMLBot reported on October 2, 2026.
AMLBot said the two transfers, made seconds apart, mixed up Ethereum and Arbitrum in opposite directions, and that one receiving address has since been blacklisted by Circle, the issuer of USDC.
What AMLBot Traced
Chainflip is a decentralized cross-chain swap protocol that exchanges native assets across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, and Polkadot Asset Hub without wrapped tokens or traditional bridges. To start a swap, a user opens a deposit channel, a temporary address assigned to one asset on one specific blockchain. Funds sent to that address on any other chain are not recognized by the protocol.
In the first transfer, the attacker swapped funds through CoW Protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator that settles trades through batch auctions, and paid roughly 267,000 USDC on Ethereum to a Chainflip deposit channel that was opened only on Arbitrum. Arbitrum is a layer-2 network that processes transactions off the Ethereum mainnet and settles them back to Ethereum. Because the channel did not exist on Ethereum, the USDC arrived at an address Chainflip was not monitoring on that chain. Circle later blacklisted the receiving address, which prevents the USDC held there from being transferred.
In the second transfer, about 160 ETH, valued at roughly $430,000 at the time of AMLBot’s report, was bridged from Ethereum to Arbitrum and then sent to a Chainflip channel that exists only on Ethereum. AMLBot said no contract on Arbitrum is able to sweep those funds, so the ETH remains stuck at the address.
Combined, the two errors account for about $697,000, which AMLBot rounded to $700,000.
Why a Script Is the Likely Cause
AMLBot described both deposits as likely script-driven, citing the timing and the mirrored nature of the mistakes. One transfer sent Ethereum funds to an Arbitrum-only channel, while the other sent Arbitrum funds to an Ethereum-only channel, which points to a configuration error in which the two networks were swapped rather than a one-off manual slip.
The pattern fits earlier observations from MistTrack, the on-chain tracking unit of blockchain security firm SlowMist. In late September, MistTrack reported that operators were placing automated CoW Protocol orders with pre-set Chainflip deposit addresses as recipients to move Bitget proceeds toward Bitcoin (BTC).
MistTrack also reported that Chainflip had rejected at least one related deposit at the broker level and refunded it along its original route instead of completing the swap. Brokers are the third parties that open deposit channels for users on Chainflip.
The October 2 errors show a concrete weakness in that automation: a script that pre-sets deposit addresses can route funds to a destination that never existed on the sending chain, with no human check before the transaction confirms.
Where the Wider Laundering Trail Stands
The stranded amount does not materially change the scale of the theft. Freezes and protocol rejections have so far blocked only a small share of the total.
NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap system in the NEAR ecosystem, said it refused most of more than $50 million that attackers tried to route through it, but froze only about $503,000 mid-swap while roughly $166,000 completed. Tether and Circle have also frozen idle stablecoin balances linked to the attacker.
Public tracing from blockchain security firm BlockSec and others shows the largest pass-through volumes moving through THORChain, a decentralized cross-chain liquidity network, with Chainflip appearing as a secondary route.
AMLBot has published several earlier findings on the case. The firm traced roughly 4 BTC linked to a Bitget TRON wallet into a Wasabi CoinJoin round, a privacy technique that combines many users’ coins in a single transaction to obscure their origin, after the funds moved through Tether (USDT), Ethereum, and THORChain.
On September 29, AMLBot flagged three THORChain affiliates that, according to its data, were used only by attacker wallets for about 3,700 swaps worth roughly $58.7 million, mostly XRP and ETH converted into BTC.
Affiliates are interfaces or addresses that charge an optional fee on THORChain swaps, and those fees are paid in RUNE, THORChain’s native token, by default. AMLBot said one of the three affiliates later cashed out to the exchange OKX, while another sent its fees back to an attacker’s wallet.
Separately, on-chain investigator ZachXBT reported that alleged North Korean hackers moved Zcash (ZEC) linked to the theft into a shielded pool. No government has formally attributed the Bitget breach to North Korea.
How the Bitget Breach Happened
Bitget’s systems flagged unauthorized transfers from some hot wallets, which stay connected to the internet for daily withdrawals, and warm wallets, which sit between hot and offline cold storage, at 18:31 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on September 24. The exchange first estimated the loss at $351.6 million, then revised it to about $387.5 million after additional Zcash and TRON transactions from the same window were classified.
Bitget has said its private keys were not stolen. An analysis by GoPlus Security found that the attackers fed forged instructions into Bitget’s own signing system, which then approved the transfers as legitimate. Interim findings released on September 30 by SlowMist and Mandiant, Google Cloud’s incident response unit, said the attackers first gained access through a third-party product weeks before the theft.
Bitget said its User Protection Fund covers the loss and launched a Recovery Bounty Program offering 5% of funds frozen and 5% of funds recovered through eligible voluntary efforts. The exchange restarted withdrawals in phases, beginning with Bitcoin at 08:00 UTC on September 28.
What Comes Next
Circle’s blacklist applies to the USDC address identified in the Ethereum-side error. The ETH sent to the mismatched Arbitrum address remains inaccessible to any sweep contract, according to AMLBot. Whether either balance can eventually be returned to Bitget will depend on Circle’s processes for blacklisted funds and on whether any technical path exists for the stuck ETH.
On-chain monitoring of the remaining Bitget-linked wallets, as well as further Chainflip, THORChain, and mixer activity, is ongoing. Bitget has not issued a statement specifically addressing the mismatched Chainflip deposits.
The Bitget theft was the largest single incident in a month that CertiK ranked as 2026’s worst for crypto hack losses.
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