💸 $340M bitcoin heist — and most of it came back

Liquid Network is a settlement layer built by Blockstream in 2018, connecting several major crypto exchanges under one roof. Over the weekend, a hacker exploited a bug to drain roughly 4,000 BTC — about $340 million — making it one of the largest crypto thefts of the year, per the Rekt leaderboard.

Then the plot twisted. The hacker offered a deal: fix the bug, get the coins back. Blockstream fixed it. Around 3,400 BTC were returned — the remaining ~600 BTC (~$47M) are still with the hacker, and the network stays paused while additional security work is completed.

A white-hat heist, live-streamed negotiations, and 600 bitcoins quietly kept as a consulting fee. The cheapest security audit in history this was not.

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