Bitget kept withdrawals frozen after one of the year's biggest exchange hacks. Then announced four token delistings.
- The crypto exchange, said on Sept. 25 that it would remove FHE/USDT, DRIFT/USDT, RVV/USDT and DOG/USDT from spot trading on Sept. 30 at 10:00 a.m. UTC.
- The announcement came while an exchange-wide withdrawal freeze imposed after a $380+ million security breach was still in effect.
- Trading remained operational.
The timing
Bitget detected unauthorized transfers from its hot wallets at 6:31 p.m. UTC on Sept. 24 and initially estimated the affected funds at about $351.6 million.
The exchange suspended withdrawals while keeping deposits and trading operational.
By 2:05 p.m. UTC the following day, Bitget said it had identified and fixed the underlying vulnerability but was still conducting security checks before withdrawals could resume.
- It also revised the amount transferred to attacker-controlled addresses to approximately $387.5 million after adding Zcash and TRON assets that hadn't been included in its initial estimate.
But four hours before that update, at 10:00 a.m. UTC on Sept. 25, Bitget had published its delisting notice.
The exchange said the decision followed a "periodic review" that considers trading volume, liquidity and other factors.
Bitget regularly removes markets. A week earlier, for example, it announced that COTI/USDT, SAGA/USDT and RVN/USDT would be delisted on Sept. 24.
- The latest four delistings, however, came while users were unable to withdraw their funds, leaving them with little choice but to hold or sell into distressed prices.
DOG breaks away
The timing nevertheless drew criticism from the DOG community.
Leonidas, the pseudonymous co-founder of Runestone, the project from which the Bitcoin-based DOG memecoin emerged, argued on X that announcing the delisting while withdrawals were unavailable contributed to DOG trading away from prices on other exchanges.
Market data shows there was a substantial gap.
Bitget's own pages recorded DOG/USDT at $0.0008686 on Sept. 25, down nearly 20% over 24 hours.
Less than an hour later, market-data aggregator GiaCoin recorded DOG at $0.0009275 on Bitget, compared with roughly $0.001058 on Kraken and $0.001059 on Gate, a discount of about 12%.
Withdrawals may come after the delisting
Bitget's delisting notice says withdrawals of FHE, DRIFT, RVV and DOG will be supported until Dec. 30.
But when that announcement was published, the exchange-wide withdrawal suspension remained in place.
Bitget said on Sept. 26 that withdrawals would return gradually: Bitcoin on Sept. 28, Ethereum on selected networks on Sept. 29, USDT on selected networks on Sept. 30, and "other tokens" only on Oct. 2.
Under that schedule, withdrawals of DOG, FHE, DRIFT and RVV would not resume until after their spot markets are scheduled to be removed on Sept. 30, unless Bitget restores those assets earlier or changes its timetable.
- The Coinformer reached out to Bitget and will update the story once the exchange responds.