IoTeX is trying a fast and public play after the ioTube bridge exploit. The team said it will pay a 10% white-hat bounty if the attacker returns the stolen funds within 48 hours, and reports say the offer is tied to roughly $4.3 million to $4.4 million in assets. At current prices, that puts the bounty near $431,000 if the remaining funds are valued from the traced bitcoin amount. The message from IoTeX is clear: return the funds now, and this can end as a recovery case instead of a legal case.
The core issue was not a break in the IoTeX Layer 1 chain itself. Reports point to a compromised private key tied to bridge operations on the Ethereum side. That matters because it changes how traders and builders read the risk. This was not a smart contract bug found in audited code. It was a key control failure, which is now one of the biggest weak points in crypto security. In simple terms, the lock was not broken. The key was taken. That is why this story fits a broader crypto trend: attackers keep going after people, workflows, and key storage, not only code.
There is also a dispute over the total loss. Some reports put the direct impact closer to $2 million, while on-chain analysts tracked a larger number after swaps, minting activity, and cross-chain moves. That gap is common in crypto exploits because one side counts the direct drain and another side counts all downstream effects, including minted or wrapped assets. Both views matter. The lower number helps estimate the direct hit to treasury and users. The higher number helps show market stress and reputational damage.
The laundering path also explains why recovery is hard. Analysts said the attacker moved assets into ETH and then bridged part of the funds toward bitcoin through THORChain. Once funds move across chains and through swaps, tracing can still work, but freezing and recovery become much harder. IoTeX says it traced fund movements and identified bitcoin addresses linked to the exploit. CoinDesk reported about 66.6 to 66.78 BTC in those addresses. With bitcoin now at about $64,582, that stash is worth roughly $4.30 million to $4.31 million. That matches the higher end of the loss estimates and shows why the bounty offer is still on the table.
The market reaction gives a good chart read for traders. IOTX sold off hard after the exploit, dropping from around $0.0054 to below $0.0042, then bounced. That kind of move often shows a “shock sell, then price discovery” pattern. Panic selling hits first as traders cut risk, then price stabilizes when the market sees the chain is still running and the damage may be contained. Right now, IOTX is trading near $0.004593, which is above the panic low but still far below recent levels, down about 18.9% over seven days. The 24-hour range sits around $0.004191 to $0.004766, which tells us volatility is still high and sellers are still active.
Volume is the second part of the chart story, and it supports the idea of an event-driven market. CoinGecko shows about $6.32 million in 24-hour IOTX trading volume, up more than 47% from the prior day. When price drops hard and volume rises, that usually means forced exits, fast repricing, and heavy short-term positioning. When price starts to rebound while volume stays elevated, it can mean bargain buyers are stepping in, but it can also mean traders are just rotating risk for a quick bounce. In this case, the bounce looks more like a relief move than a full trend reversal because the token is still well below where it traded before the exploit.
The bigger link across all these topics is trust. The exploit itself was about bridge trust and key custody. The price move was about market trust. The bounty is about trust in enforcement and negotiation. IoTeX is trying to rebuild confidence by tracing funds, flagging addresses, and pushing a node upgrade with a blacklist of malicious EOAs. That may help contain follow-on risk, but traders will still watch two things next: whether any funds are returned, and whether the team shows stronger key management after this event. In crypto, recovery is not only about getting coins back. It is also about proving the same path cannot be used again.
