Blockstream announced that it will not pay a ransom for the return of approximately 598.5 BTC still missing following the recent exploit of the Liquid Network, despite days of negotiations with those responsible for the theft. The Liquid Network, operated by Blockstream as a Bitcoin sidechain, suffered an attack on Sunday that allowed exploiters to drain about 4,000 BTC from its reserves, valued at roughly $320 million. A vulnerability in the way Liquid nodes handle range proof verifications enabled the attackers to mint unbacked L-BTC tokens, which were then swapped for real Bitcoin through SideSwap. SideSwap, a federation member with peg-out authorization, unknowingly enabled this transfer. The network’s Bitcoin reserves fell to 197 BTC as a result.