"Bybit's $1.4B Loss: EVM Blame Game Divides Crypto Community"

The cryptocurrency community is divided over the root cause of the recent Bybit hack, with Bitcoin advocates attributing it to the "mis-design" of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), while others argue operational security failures were to blame. Blockstream co-founder Adam Back criticized EVM technology in a Feb. 23 X post, following Bybit's loss of $1.4 billion in Ether (ETH)-related tokens.

Back wrote, "People are misunderstanding critique of repeated EVM hacks, the latest and the largest Bybit $1.4 billion missing the point: EVM can go to zero, no one cares. The problem is the EVM dumpster fire hurts ecosystem credibility, which unfairly bleeds over to Bitcoin."

Many in the community pushed back against Back's EVM criticism, pointing at weaknesses in operational security around multisignature wallets rather than flaws in the EVM. Back went on to say that Bybit's incident had nothing to do with the security of its hardware wallets but rather the EVM complexity of properly verifying a transaction on a hardware wallet. He also argued that the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem is free from such vulnerabilities.

However, there was no shortage of opposition to Back's perspective on the root cause of Bybit's hack. dyma Budorin, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Hacken, told Cointelegraph, "While we respect Adam Back's viewpoint and the wider conversation it ignites about blockchain security, Hacken doesn't fully agree that the issues highlighted by the Bybit hack are exclusive to Ethereum or the EVM."

Lex Fisun, co-founder and CEO of the Swiss blockchain analytics platform Global Ledger, echoed these sentiments. "In the latest Bybit hack, only one ETH cold wallet was affected, while other wallets remained secure," Fisun told Cointelegraph, suggesting that the breach could have resulted from "weaknesses in operational security around cold wallet transfers rather than a fundamental flaw in the EVM itself."

As the debate continues, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has yet to publicly address the accusations regarding the EVM's security vulnerabilities. According to social media reports, the Bybit hacker became the 14th largest ETH holder globally, overtaking Fidelity and Buterin. Bybit declined to comment on whether it believes the EVM played a role in