The Bybit hacker, supposedly a North Korean entity, is now one of the world’s largest ether holders, which may have bullish implications for the cryptocurrency’s spot price.

According to data from Arkham Intelligence and Coinbase executive Connor Grogan, this malicious actor holds 489,000 ETH, valued at approximately $1.34 billion, constituting about 0.4% of ether’s total supply, making it the 14th-largest Ether holder globally. That puts the hacker ahead of the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum’s CEO Vitalik Buterin and Fidelity.

It’s important to note that the addresses linked to this entity are being closely monitored and backlisted by exchanges, which means the hacker will likely struggle to offload these coins in the market.

In simpler terms, the hacked ether supply is likely lost permanently. Furthermore, Bybit, which has reportedly secured a bridged loan from unnamed partners to cover nearly 80% of the ether lost in the Friday hack, will likely need to purchase coins in the market.

«As far as this supply is concerned, it’s essentially gone. No OTC desk or exchange will facilitate the movement of such a large amount. Meanwhile, Bybit is short 402k ETH. The bridge loan may cover immediate needs, but purchasing will still be necessary,» Vance Spencer, co-founder of the crypto VC firm Framework Ventures, said on X.

That probably explains why ether has bounced 2.6% to $2,730 from the overnight low of around $2,614. Funding rates in perpetual futures tied to ether remain positive, implying a bias for long positions, according to data source Coingecko.

Crypto exchange Bitget has transferred 40,000 ether (ETH), worth $105 million, to Bybit, offering crucial support to its industry counterpart in the wake of the over billion-dollar hack suffered by the exchange.

The funds transferred are from Bitget’s own reserves, not user deposits, which remain securely stored on the platform and can be cross checked through the proof of reserves, the exchange’s CEO, Gracy Chen, said in a note shared with CoinDesk, while assuring more support if needed.

«At Bitget we strongly believe in supporting the community and everyone contributing towards the growth of crypto,» Chen said.

A suspected North Korean entity drained approximately $1.4 billion in ether from Bybit on Friday. The hack prompted an unprecedented wave of withdrawal requests from users, with the exchange successfully processing 99% of them, effectively facing a significant market stress test.

Part of the stolen funds started to move during Asian afternoon hours on Saturday with over 5,000 ETH moved through eXch mixer — a service that masks wallet address — before being sent to bridge protocol ChainFlip where the stash was converted to bitcoin (BTC).

In an X post, ChainFlip said it couldn’t block fund movements as it was a fully decentralized applications that relies on automated smart contracts, but that it had «turned off some frontend services to stop the flow.»

On the other hand, Bitget has blacklisted wallets tied to the hacker that drained ether worth millions from Bybit on Friday.

«We will block any transactions flowing in from illicit addresses to the exchange once it has been monitored. Our team of security, and researchers, are currently tracking these activities,» Chen said.

Despite the hack, Bybit had managed to process over 350,000 withdrawal requests and has since restored normal withdrawal operations, per an X post.

Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and major ether (ETH) holder, asked Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to rollback the network in order to assist hacked exchange Bybit, which lost nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) on Friday.

«@VitalikButerin will you advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official. My own view as a mega $ETH bag holder is $ETH stopped being money in 2016 after the DAO hack hardfork. If the community wanted to do it again, I would support it because we already voted no on immutability in 2016 [wh]y not do it again?» Hayes said on X.

Buterin was yet to reply as of time of publication.

The Bybit hack came into light on Friday when on-chain analyst ZachXBT noted suspicious outflows of over $1.4 billion from the exchange, with the attacker quickly swapping mETH and stETH for ether through a decentralized exchange.

The attacker then split 10,000 ETH to 39 different addresses and another 10,000 ETH to nine addresses, Gautham Santhosh, co-founder of Polynomial.fi, explained on X.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said that the hacker «took control of the specific ETH cold wallet and transferred all the ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address.» Zhou confirmed that the exchange «is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered.»

One of the potential ways to address hacking is to roll back the blockchain. It involves reverting the blockchain to a state before the occurrence of a specific event, in this case, the hack. That way, malicious transactions resulting from the hack can be erased, effectively restoring lost or stolen funds. Implementing a rollback requires consensus from the network participants.

For instance, in 2016, the Ethereum network was rolled back using a hard fork to reverse a theft of $60 million in ether from The DAO (30% of all ETH in circulation back then). The hard fork split the chain into two – Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

In 2019, Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao and his team considered pushing for a rollback on the Bitcoin network following a $40 million hack. However, the Bitcoin mining community criticized the idea of going back against the principle of decentralization and immutability, which are fundamental to blockchain technology.

Immutability is a security feature that prevents data from being changed after it’s added to the blockchain to make it trustworthy and tamper-proof. There are similar concerns regarding a potential Ethereum rollover.

«I wish we could roll back for the Bybit hack, I’m not against the idea. But the DAO hack was 15% of ETH with a clean recovery path. Today, a rollback would break bridges, stablecoins, L2s, RWAs and so much more. ETH ecosystem is just too interconnected now for a clean solution like 2016,» Santhosh said.

Sina 21st Capital explained that Ethereum is now stuck between a rock and a hard place.

«Ethereum is toast. They can roll back the chain and destroy what is left of the decentralization claim or allow North Korean baad actors to keep $1.4B of ETH and unleash an eternal internal battle. Either way, it is terrible,» Sina 21st Capital said on X.

Ether has dropped nearly 3% in 24 hours, but continues to trade rangebound between $2,600 and $2,800, CoinDesk data show.