Well.. that was quite an evening... I had woken up in the middle of the night a bit thirsty. When I'm travelling, I often find that the hotel air-conditioning is a bit on the strong side of things, and that means that it gets a bit dry... and then, I get thirsty as all hell in the middle of the night.

So, I got up... got a drink... and in what was a bit of an unusual move, instead of going straight back to sleep, I decided that it would be a good idea to check my phone... and there was a Twitter notification from Ethena... saying that they were aware of the situation at Bybit, and that Ethena collateral wasn't in danger.

Uh oh... that doesn't sound good...

So, fire up Twitter, and we were about 20 minutes into the public discovery that Bybit had been hacked... by North Korea... for the princely sum of 1.5 BILLION USD from their Ethereum cold wallet. Ah crap... a bit of a quick look around to the usual response team... and it didn't look good, a sophisticated attack that got around their multi-sig... and perhaps lax protocol towards the signings that weren't able to defeat a nation state attacker... and well, I already got stung a little bit by the FTX collapse...

... and I wasn't going to hang around and see how this would play out.

Straight to the withdrawals... kill off the earn products, and then queue the withdrawal requests... not fun to do on a phone in the middle of the night when you just woke up... but it had to be done, and screw it... I would eat the transaction fees and not hum and haw like last time.

Thankfully, withdrawals weren't being paused... but there were backlogged on the Ethereum mainnet and some of the L2s... but in general everything that I wanted to save got out... and there is just a little bit of shrapnel left in there.

Unfortunately, Bybit is one of the few exchanges in Australia that is doing Earn products... Binance is down for Australians in terms of their Earn products, which really sucks. But I was having great experiences with Bybit... even though they were a bit limited in their withdrawal options. But still... better than nothing, and their CEO seemed on the right track...

... so, back to sleep... have two performances in the next day, and needed to be alert.

And by the morning, all the withdrawals had cleared...

... playing it safe, even thought the morning brought good news that it appears that Bybit is still very much solvent, withdrawals continue, and that other exchanges were helping with bridging loans...

... but now, it is hilarious to read some parts of twitter adding in their two cents worth with highly uninformed takes of what happened and what should happen. Honestly, I'm just going to follow that SEAL team... they know their stuff.

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Coinbase Wallet: Multi chain wallet with lots of opportunities to Learn and Earn!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals! This link also gives you back 25% of the commission.
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.
MEXC: Accepts HIVE, and trades in most poopcoins! Join the casino!
ByBit: Leverage and spot trading, next Binance?
OkX: Again, another Binance contender?