$1.5 billion crypto heist could be the biggest yet, more than doubling the previous record, but don’t worry: The affected firm says it can take the hit

As reported by the BBC, Dubai-based crypto firm Bybit is down $1.5 billion in Ethereum after hackers compromised its digital wallet. If the hackers successfully make off with the dough, that would make this the largest single crypto heist ever, more than doubling the previous record holder’s ill-gotten gains.

Bybit has not fully disclosed how the hackers gained access to the wallet, but it characterized the attack as an exploit of “security features.” That’s in line with previous big crypto heists, which relied on security loopholes or some other form of purely digital access rather than social engineering. Despite the unprecedented size of this attack, Bybit says it and its customers should actually be fine, even if the funds are never recovered. Bybit lays claim to $20 billion in assets, and founder Ben Zhou says it can cover the loss with those funds or through a loan.

The now second-place crypto heist took a paltry $617 million from “play to earn” NFT pet game Axie Infinity in 2022, taking advantage of a security exploit in the game’s “sidechain,” Ronin, a sort of Ethereum Jr. you have to also futz around with to play Worse Pokémon with NFTs. The funds were allegedly stolen by the North Korea-linked “Lazarus Group,” and Axie Infinity is miraculously still around and available for download on the app store in at least some form, though Reuters reported in 2023 that the crypto crash tanked both its value and player count.

The contrast between Axie Infinity and Bybit’s respective heist experiences is illustrative of how much crypto has changed in the intervening years⁠. “Grown up” is probably too generous a phrase to describe it, but the victim of the largest heist ever is now a buttoned-up institution of global finance capital, not a weird NFT pet game. Crypto has largely dropped any of the “artistic” or lifestyle pretenses that were so in vogue just a few years ago, instead joining a plethora of abstracted securities on the marketplace.

The notable exception is the increased proliferation of shitcoins, now tastefully rebranded to “meme” coins, with flare ups of “is that even allowed?” tomfoolery around the flash-in-the-pan explosions and subsequent cratering in value of the likes of Hawk Tua coin, Trump coin, or (for the ladies) Melania coin. Argentinian president Javier Milei is currently engulfed in an existential scandal over his alleged paid promotion of the pump and dump Libra token, which seems to have financially devastated many in the country.

The last notable holdout on the “crypto as entertainment” front, give or take a few sad farts from Ubisoft or Square Enix projects that had too much inertia to quietly die, is the upcoming blockchain-backed spinoff of EVE Online, EVE Frontier. Despite everything, CCP Game’s prior expertise in digital marketplaces and proposed on-the-fly system of modding support at least has me convinced of its legitimate intent with the game.