A Hacker Transformed 25 Cents Worth of Bitcoin Into 46 Billion Counterfeit BTC Tokens on a DeFi Bridge
In early 2024, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem was shaken by a dramatic exploit that highlighted both the promise and the peril of cross‑chain bridges. A single attacker, starting with a modest investment of just 25 US cents in Bitcoin, managed to generate an astronomical 46 billion synthetic Bitcoin tokens—known as syBTC—on the Symbiosis bridge. This figure represents more than 2,000 …
Sept. 15, 2026, 1:43 p.m.