Liquid reserve withdrawal and partial Bitcoin recovery

What happened

Liquid acknowledged a roughly 4,000 BTC withdrawal, valued at about $320m at the time. SideSwap says the L-BTC used for the peg-out was created through an Elements bug. On 7 September, 3,400 BTC returned to the federation address; the return transaction sent 598.49955894 BTC back to the actor. The dollar figure here is the initial gross withdrawal estimate, before recovery.

The return confirmed at 16:09:25 UTC on 7 September in block 965,950. It restored roughly 85% of the approximately 4,000 BTC headline amount. A subsequent 8 September transaction retained 598.49988609 BTC in a large output at the actor’s address, after intervening small transfers. The actor’s white-hat description is self-asserted; the cited records establish the movement of coins, while terms for retaining them remain unconfirmed. Blockstream’s status page still listed an active public bridge incident when checked on 8 September. The Exploit Tracker’s $320m entry is gross incident value, not a $320m outstanding loss.