Binance reopens withdrawals after a $6.3bn hack
Why it matters
If an exchange the size of Binance can lose $6.3 billion in one night, every fund will ask harder questions: how much sits in hot wallets, what insurance really covers, and whether a regulated custodian is the safer home.
The short version
Binance has started letting people take their money out again after hackers stole about $6.3 billion from its hot wallets late on 29 October. The exchange says it has already covered about 95% of what was taken with its own money, including its emergency SAFU fund, so customers won't take the hit.
Here's what happened. Late on Thursday 29 October, hackers drained about $6.3bn from Binance's hot wallets, the online wallets it uses to pay out withdrawals day to day. CoinDesk calls it the biggest crypto hack on record.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, quoted by CoinDesk, says the haul included 18,270 BTC (about $1.47 billion), 200,630 ETH, 1.875 billion USDT and 823 million USDC, plus some XRP and SOL. Analysts link the attack to TraderTraitor, a group tied to North Korea.
Binance switched withdrawals back on in stages from Sunday 1 November, starting with bitcoin and 15 other networks. The rest come back once each network passes its security checks. There's no date for that yet.
So who pays? Binance says it has replaced about 95% of the stolen assets so far, up from 90% the day before. The last 5% is smaller tokens that take longer to buy back. About $3 billion of the stolen money is frozen, mostly USDT and USDC, because their issuers can block tokens. Bitcoin and ether can't be frozen that way.
Where this comes from
Written with AI from the sources above and checked against them before publishing. Here's how we work. This is news, not financial advice. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.