Bitget Hack Funds Enter Zcash
Bitget resumed withdrawals and raised its hack estimate to approximately $387.5 million, attributing the breach to third-party product vulnerabilities, per coverage. The attackers moved roughly $4 million into Zcash's shielded pool — via what coverage calls the Ironwood upgrade — after NEAR Intents' SHIELD layer blocked over $50 million in swap attempts, per CoinDesk and Decrypt. Cointelegraph separately examines whether THORChain's refusal to blacklist attacker addresses invites prosecution.
Shielded Pool: the privacy worked, just not for who you'd hope
Here's the uncomfortable fact for anyone who holds Zcash on principle: the first big public test of its newest shielded pool isn't a dissident or a journalist hiding a payment. It's the Bitget hackers, washing about $3.9 million so investigators lose the trail.
The thing privacy coins promise worked exactly as designed. Sender, recipient, amount — hidden.
Keep the scale honest: that's about one per cent of the $387.5 million taken. The attackers first tried routing $50 million through NEAR's privacy layer — which has a compliance filter built in. It blocked them.
So the same story shows you both designs. Privacy with a permission slip stopped the money. Privacy without one hid it.
Do you flinch? The honest answer is no. A tool that only protects the sympathetic isn't privacy — it's permission with better branding. Monero and Zcash either hide everyone or they hide no one.
That's the whole bet, and this is the ugly side of winning it.
Related storylines
- DeFi exploit wave 2026DeFi exploit wave with stolen funds flowing through privacy protocols
5 sources
- Bitget Raises Crypto Hack Estimate to $387.5M as Withdrawals Resume · cointribune.com · T2
- Bitget hackers move $4 million into Zcash’s private pool, making funds harder to trace · coindesk.com · T1
- Could THORChain face prosecution over stolen Bitget funds? · cointelegraph.com · T1
- Bitget Hacker Turns to Zcash Privacy Pool After Near Rejects $50M in Swaps · decrypt.co · T1
- Bitget’s hackers turn to Zcash after $50 million laundering route gets blocked · cryptoslate.com · T2