Bitget CEO Gracy Chen has said she does not believe the $388 million stolen from her company will be recovered, and the latest progress report from Drift Protocol has done little to challenge that pessimism. More than six months after Drift suffered its exploit, most of the looted funds remain unrecovered and are still being laundered through the Tornado Cash mixer.

How much has Drift Protocol recovered?

The Drift Foundation published an update on the recovery effort on X on Wednesday, reiterating its commitment to reclaiming the roughly $295.4 million stolen from users on April 1 through freezes, a bounty, or other methods.

Despite the ongoing push, the absence of results so far has dampened spirits. The loss was pegged at $285 million and made up more than 50% of Drift's total value. The funds were traced to a fake token scheme that allowed the thieves to withdraw USDC, SOL, and ETH after assuming control of the Solana-based protocol.

The plot went on for about six months. The perpetrators presented themselves as a quantitative trading firm, held face-to-face meetings with Drift contributors, and deposited more than $1 million ahead of the theft.

For Drift, future signs of progress would include newly frozen assets, funds recovered through the bounty, or other identifiable movements that can be acted on before the money is moved further through mixers or other services.

The trail went cold, then resurfaced in a mixer

The stolen funds remained untouched for a large part of the spring, with no visible movement on-chain. In July, reports — including an analysis by Chainalysis — emerged that a wallet tagged "Drift Exploiter 4" had sent 23,095.1 ETH, worth around $44.4 million, to Tornado Cash through numerous transactions on July 23 and 24.

The move was the first major movement the group had made in months, following a 0.85 ETH transfer to Bybit deposit addresses.

Even ZachXBT, one of the most prominent independent on-chain investigators, has decided to stop keeping track of the funds in the absence of institutional help. The task, he claimed, was "difficult for a team and not feasible for a single person."

Why Chen isn't optimistic

On Tuesday, September 29, Chen stated that the Bybit incident, which occurred in February 2025, will be used as a "good reference point" for Bitget's loss. Hackers stole $1.5 billion in Ether from Bybit, and the company has recovered or frozen a total of $80 million.

"I'm actually not very optimistic because after a year or so of Bybit's hack, they've only [been able to freeze] about 3.5% of the total stolen funds," Chen said, as reported by Cointelegraph.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou reported that almost 28% of the stolen money had gone dark by April 2025, once it passed through mixers and cross-chain bridges. Bybit went on to sue North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, and the Lazarus Group in a U.S. federal court, where the court granted a preliminary injunction to freeze identified assets.

What Bitget has recovered so far

Bitget reported an initial loss of $352 million after last Thursday's incident, though Chen later stated the actual amount to be $388 million. The company has placed a bounty of 5% of frozen and recovered funds.

It has received help in that respect: the NEAR Intents team blocked over $50 million linked to the incident and froze roughly $500,000. Tether and Circle also blacklisted a wallet linked to the attack, which held $318,013 in stablecoins. Additionally, wallets linked to the hack have moved around $3.9 million in ZEC into Zcash's Ironwood shielded pool.