A hacker transformed 25 cents worth of Bitcoin into 46 billion counterfeit BTC tokens via a DeFi bridge
In early 2024, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem was shaken by a startling exploit that highlighted both the power and the perils of cross‑chain bridges. A single attacker, starting with a modest investment of just a quarter‑dollar in Bitcoin, managed to generate an astronomical 46 billion fake Bitcoin tokens—known in the system as syBTC—by exploiting vulnerabilities in a popular DeFi br…
Sept. 15, 2026, 1:43 p.m.