Liquid – Finance News Today

Alleged White-Hat Hackers Withdraw 4,000 Bitcoin From Blockstream’s Liquid

Finance News — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:36:22 +0000

The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC. Bridge nodes were disabled, and the sidechain was paused. Other issued assets, including USDT, DePix and RWAs, were unaffected, the official account said on X.

The Liquid Network is a federated sidechain of Bitcoin, founded by Adam Back’s Blockstream. The Liquid chain issues a variety of assets such as LBTC, which it backs with BTC on the Bitcoin main chain, held in a large multisig of 15 corporate and known members. 11 of the 15 members need to sign a valid multi-signature transaction to move coins from the treasury. Before the hack, the treasury held over 4200 BTC; after the hack, Blockstream’s proof of reserves page reports a little over 207 BTC left.

The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key. SideWap is a bridge exchange and a member of the Liquid Federation. While details on the mechanism of the hack are not confirmed yet, it appears an inflation bug on the LBTC side chain was exploited by the hackers to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before, and cash them out for on-chain bitcoin from the federation. Because the transaction appeared as valid, given the consensus bug, the federation members’ HSM security servers signed the BTC withdrawal transaction, worth roughly 320 million at the time.

The hacker moved the funds to an address ending in 6gyqjlte, from which they quickly signed a new transaction with a message on the OP_RETURN arbitrary data field saying “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Those coins were still at that address at the time of writing.

A small mainnet transaction to the hacker address followed by an OP_RETURN saying “Please contact [email protected]”, presumably from a Blockstream public address, though that remains unconfirmed. A later OP_RETURN spend from the hacker address carried “Please contact us on Signal @m671aw.70”, however, this may be spam and does not share a link to the address with the stolen funds.

In response to the breach, exchanges were told to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. Bridge nodes on the Liquid Network have been paused, limiting access to the side chain, which continues to produce blocks.

JAN3 CEO Samson Mow said Aqua’s Liquid features were affected and that on-chain bitcoin still worked. Other wallets in the industry that use the Liquid Network are expected to be affected. Users holding LBTC now effectively have their savings at risk, since the underlying BTC is currently not redeemable. Given the private nature of the Liquid chain, user onchain analytics are scarce and not much public information is known about how much LBTC is held by retail users versus corporations of Blockstream itself. Nevertheless, should the funds not be returned, it would be a heavy blow to the Liquid Network’s user…

Liquid Glass design executive Alan Dye is leaving Apple

Finance News — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 22:20:10 +0000

File: Then Apple Creative Director Alan Dye celebrates the launch of the July Issue at the new WIRED office on June 24, 2015 in San Francisco, California.

Kimberly White | Getty Images

Apple‘s head of user interface design, Alan Dye, will reportedly join Meta, in a notable shift of executive talent in Silicon Valley.

Apple confirmed Dye’s departure and CEO Tim Cook said in a statement that the company prioritizes design and has a strong team. The statement said that veteran designer Stephen Lemay will succeed Dye.

“Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Cook said in a statement.

Compared to other Silicon Valley companies, Apple has always emphasized design to customers and investors as one of its strengths. Apple prominently features its design executives to discuss interface changes at the company’s launch events.

Most recently, Dye revealed in June a redesign of Apple’s software interface for iPhones, Macs, and Apple Watch called Liquid Glass. The company described it as an “elegant” new design with translucent buttons, updated app icons, and fluid animations.

Dye said it was the “next chapter” of the company’s software and said it “sets the stage” for the next era of Apple products.

“Our new design blurs the lines between hardware and software to create an experience that’s more delightful than ever while still familiar and easy to use,” Dye said at the launch.

Reviews were mixed on the Liquid Glass update, which shipped with new iPhones in September.

Apple announces liquid glass during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9, 2025 in Cupertino, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

For years, Apple design was embodied by executive Jony Ive, who left Apple in 2019 and is now working with OpenAI on artificial intelligence hardware alongside Sam Altman.

Dye took over user interface design and became one of the design studio’s leads in 2015 when Ive stepped back from a day-to-day role. Dye started at Apple in 2006 and worked on software for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Vision Pro, according to his LinkedIn.

He was also partly responsible for the first iPhone in 2017 that did away with the home screen button at the bottom of the device and replaced it with a software-based swipe-up motion.

Meta has said in recent years that it wants to be a major maker of hardware and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said Apple is one of the social networking company’s biggest competitors.

Meta currently makes several virtual reality headsets under its Oculus brand, and recently scored its first hardware hit with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are stylish sunglasses equipped with cameras and the ability to run an AI model that can answer questions. Sales of the device tripled over the past year, the Ray-Ban parent company said in July.

Bloomberg first reported the move.

The report said that Dye will be in charge of a new design studio at Meta where he will be in charge of…