By Isaac • September 12, 2026 7:33 am •
Blockstream is drawing a hard line after one of the strangest recoveries the crypto industry has seen: most of the Bitcoin taken from the Liquid Network came back, but the company is refusing the attacker’s demand for nearly 600 BTC — roughly $50 million — as a reward for returning it.
The dispute grew out of a September 6 exploit involving Liquid, Blockstream’s Bitcoin sidechain. According to a detailed CryptoSlate review of the incident and the onchain messages, the attacker exploited a vulnerability to create about 4,000 unbacked L-BTC and withdrew approximately 3,996 real BTC through SideSwap.
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After Blockstream patched affected nodes, roughly 3,400 BTC was returned. That is an extraordinary recovery by crypto-hack standards. It
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