Bitget Hack: About $3.9 Million in Stolen ZEC Moves Into a Zcash Shielded Pool

Oct. 1 (CandyPulse) — Stolen funds from last week's Bitget exchange hack are disappearing from view. A wallet linked to the attack moved 2,746 ZEC, worth about $3.9 million, into a Zcash shielded pool, where transaction details are hidden from the public blockchain.

What happened

According to blockchain trackers, the transfers took place between 4:15 and 4:46 a.m. ET on September 30. The wallet involved had received about 18,917 ZEC during the September 24 security breach at Bitget. The latest move shifted roughly 15% of that into shielded form.

What a shielded pool does

Zcash has two kinds of transactions:

• Transparent, which work like Bitcoin: anyone can see senders, receivers and amounts.
• Shielded, which use zero-knowledge proofs to hide the sender, recipient and amount.

Once funds enter a shielded pool like Ironwood, investigators can no longer follow them on the public ledger in the usual way. That's why moving stolen crypto into privacy tools is a common tactic: it makes tracing and recovery much harder.

Bitget's response

Bitget has attributed the attack to North Korea-linked hackers, groups that have been behind several of the industry's largest thefts. The exchange has replenished its user protection fund to $309 million and says asset recovery efforts are continuing.

Why it matters

For victims and investigators, every hop into a privacy pool makes recovery less likely. Exchanges and analytics firms often try to freeze stolen funds when they reach a platform that can act, but shielded transactions remove much of the trail they rely on.

It also adds to the ongoing debate about privacy coins. Privacy protects ordinary users' financial information, but criminals can use the same tools to hide stolen money, which is why regulators keep a close eye on them.

What it means for Bitget users

Bitget says customer assets are backed by its protection fund. Users should rely on official Bitget channels for updates, and watch out for scammers posing as support staff or offering to "recover" funds after a hack.

What's next

Watch whether the remaining stolen ZEC follows the same path, and whether investigators can trace any funds as they leave the shielded pool.

This article is for information only and is not financial advice.