- The registration follows Bybit’s January 31st penalties of 9.27 crore rupees ($1.06 million).
- Bybit was hacked on February 21, 2025, by the North Korean-affiliated Lazarus Group.
In a statement made on February 25, Bybit said that it had registered with the Indian government and that all services had been restored to customers in the nation. The registration follows Bybit’s January 31st penalties of 9.27 crore rupees ($1.06 million) for a violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The cryptocurrency exchange had already cut off services to the nation a few weeks before the penalties, stating that they were concerned about not complying with the Indian government’s regulations.
According to the fine and violation report, Bybit continued to grow its services in the Indian market without registering with the FIU-IND, which is obligatory. In order to halt activities under the Information Technology Act, FIU-IND blocked their websites due to the persistent and continuing non-compliance. Bybit is present in 1,174 markets and has more than 60 million users globally, as per CoinMarketCap.
Significant Hack
Bybit was hacked on February 21, 2025, by the North Korean-affiliated Lazarus Group, leading to the theft of more than $1.4 billion worth of Ether tokens. This incident occurred four days prior to the restoration of services to customers in India.
Crypto security experts have described the attack as evidence of “increasingly creative exploits” in the crypto sector, while analysts have said that the incident reveals security holes in centralized exchanges.
The theft and withdrawals caused Bybit’s assets to plummet by more than $5.3 billion on February 22. Nonetheless, third-party audits verified that the exchange’s reserves remained higher than its liabilities. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou made the observation that withdrawals were back to normal speed on the same day, Feb. 22.
Highlighted Crypto News Today:
South Dakota Rejects Bitcoin Reserve Bill Following Montana’s Lead
