A hacker stole roughly 4,000 bitcoins — worth approximately $340 million — from Liquid Network, a cryptocurrency settlement exchange, in one of the largest known crypto thefts of the year. The incident was disclosed in a post on X on Sunday, September 7, 2026.
Liquid Network, which was launched in 2018 by crypto firm Blockstream and is used by several cryptocurrency exchanges, said it paused operations following the theft while it worked to resolve the incident. The network described the actor as a “white hat” hacker who exploited a bug to withdraw the funds.
The hacker indicated they would return the stolen bitcoin if Blockstream fixed the vulnerability. Former Blockstream executive Samson Mow confirmed on X on Monday that the company had patched the bug. By that point, around 3,400 of the stolen bitcoins had been returned, leaving approximately 600 bitcoins — worth roughly $47 million — still under the hacker’s control.
Mow said operations would remain paused until additional fixes and security improvements are completed. It has not yet been publicly confirmed who carried out the theft.
The heist ranks among the largest thefts of digital funds on record, according to the Rekt leaderboard, a tracker that monitors cryptocurrency thefts. The incident highlights the potential vulnerabilities in settlement infrastructure relied upon by multiple exchanges, and the continued exposure of significant sums of digital assets to exploitation.
Source: TechCrunch