Liquid Network gets back $268M in stolen bitcoin

Hackers drained $320 million in bitcoin from Liquid Network on Sept. 6, calling themselves white hats. By Monday, most of it was back. The attackers returned 3,400 of the 4,000 bitcoin they took, worth about $268 million. That came after Blockstream fixed the bug that let them in. They kept roughly $47 million.

Blockstream traced the theft to a flaw in Elements, the open-source software that runs Liquid. It says the bug was patched before any money came back. The attackers negotiated the return in public. They embedded messages inside Bitcoin transactions, since there was no other way to reach them. Whether "white hat" is the right label is still up for debate. Keeping $47 million while claiming good intentions looks a lot like a self-imposed finder's fee, not a favor.

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Will the last $47 million come back? Talks are reportedly still going between Blockstream and whoever holds the remaining 598.5 bitcoin. Crypto hacks used to just mean stolen money, full stop. This one ended differently, with attackers negotiating a partial return instead of vanishing outright.