Apple KYC glitch on Bybit draws swift executive response to recover $100K

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit said it had involved team members, including an executive, to fix a glitch that affected a single user who could not go through an Apple-based know-your-client (KYC) system.

In a May 18 X post, the Bybit China Team said it received reports about users experiencing withdrawal restrictions on the Bybit platform due to a KYC verification anomaly when logging in with an Apple ID. The team claimed to have immediately responded and taken action involving multiple departments, including the firm’s chief operating officer, Helen Liu.

Other people involved in the operation were the heads of customer service, risk control, the Chinese-language division, product managers and the technical team. The exchange coordinated its actions with the user.

After an internal investigation, Bybit concluded this was a “unique case affecting an individual user, not a systemic issue.” The account’s KYC information was not tampered with and the funds in the account remained secure at all times.

Bybit had not answered Cointelegraph’s request for comment at the time of writing.

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Bybit claims to have taken large-scale and timely action, which involved a member of its executive team, all in response to an issue reported by a single user. Chinese-speaking X crypto influencer EnHeng claimed to be the reason for this.

In a separate post that Bybit’s X post answers to — EnHeng explained that in a group chat, he noticed “a girl mentioned a bug related to Bybit’s Apple ID.” He verified the issue and after confirming that it was real, flagged it to Bybit.

EnHeng said that the staff responded quickly and assisted the user in recovering access to about $100,000 worth of funds. They highlighted:

EnHeng said “in this market, retail investors often lack a voice and are vulnerable.” For this reason, he said, “When we have more resources and a bigger voice, we should use them to speak up for retail investors.”

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Being locked out of a cryptocurrency exchange account or some of its features is not excessively uncommon. Often, it is an emergency measure meant to prevent fund losses.

A recent example is Phemex crypto exchange halting withdrawals after being alerted to nearly $30 million worth of suspicious outflows that raised alarms among blockchain security firms in late January. Indian cryptocurrency exchange Mudrex temporarily halted crypto withdrawals during the same month, claiming compliance improvements were the reason.

Sometimes action is taken on the request of law enforcement. Last summer, a small set of Palestinian user accounts was frozen after Israeli authorities issued a seizure request. Also last summer, OKX warned it would terminate any account linked to crypto mixer Tornado Cash or sanctioned addresses, and several users said their log-ins were suddenly disabled.

Those incidents echo an old adage popular in the Bitcoin (BTC) community: Not your keys, not your coins. This statement is meant to remind Bitcoin — and now crypto — users that real control over assets comes only with control over the private keys that allow for signing transactions.

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