Samson Mow says Liquid's 600 BTC shortfall will be covered within days
Liquid Network's Bitcoin reserves are nearly whole again. JAN3 CEO Samson Mow says the sidechain's remaining shortfall of 600 BTC will be fully covered in the coming days.The latest movement came on October 27, 2026. A test transaction of 2.53048101 BTC landed in the Liquid federation wallet.The precision of that figure is the point. Test transfers are how custodians confirm the plumbing works before sending the big money through.After that deposit, the federation wallet holds roughly 3,649 BTC. Circulating against it are 4,249 L-BTC, the token meant to represent Bitcoin on Liquid.That works out to about 85.88% coverage. It also leaves a gap of approximately 600 BTC, the amount Mow says will be filled shortly.For the uninitiated, L-BTC is supposed to be a receipt. Every token on Liquid should correspond to one real Bitcoin locked up by the federation, the group of members that manages the reserve.The trouble started on September 6, 2026. An attacker exploited a flaw in Elements, the software Liquid runs on.The bug allowed the creation of around 4,000 L-BTC with nothing backing them. Put simply, someone printed Bitcoin receipts out of thin air.The damage to reserves was severe. Holdings fell from roughly 4,205 BTC to just 197 BTC.What followed was unusual. After negotiations, the attackers returned 3,400 BTC, recovering the bulk of what had been lost.That still left a hole. Blockstream has pledged to cover it rather than push the losses onto users.The company framed the commitment bluntly, saying covering the shortfall was a matter of "when," not "if." Mow's comments now put a rough timeline on the "when."An external security audit was completed by October 20, 2026. Certain recovery measures were put in place after that review.Users are not fully free to leave yet. Moving Bitcoin off Liquid and back to the main Bitcoin chain is known as a peg-out.Peg-outs have only partially resumed, and only through third-party swap services. Direct peg-outs through the federation itself remain paused.Those direct withdrawals will stay restricted until full 1:1 backing is restored. Filling the 600 BTC gap is the precondition for turning the main exit back on.For L-BTC holders, the most immediate stake is redemption. Once the federation reaches full backing, direct peg-outs should be able to resume, removing the dependence on third-party swaps.Blockstream's decision to absorb the remaining loss matters here. Many hacked protocols have socialized losses across users, effectively giving everyone a haircut.