Binance expects to begin restoring withdrawals within 48 hours, co-CEO Yi He (@heyibinance) said, as the exchange works to recover from what is described as the largest crypto hack on record.
Binance expects to begin restoring withdrawals within 48 hours, co-CEO Yi He (@heyibinance) said, as the exchange works to recover from what is described as the largest crypto hack on record. The company says about $6.3 billion in assets was affected, and roughly $3 billion has been frozen on-chain.
In a service update posted on 30 October, Yi He said Binance expects to resume withdrawal services in the next 48 hours, and that deposits remain unaffected and continue to operate as normal. She said the team is working on enhancements to the withdrawal service and related address controls.The timeline remains an expectation rather than a confirmed reopening, and is subject to the completion of security checks.
CEO Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng) said the exchange will absorb the losses. According to Decrypt, Binance has reserved more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the stolen assets, $5 billion of which is already held in the exact tokens taken, including USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH and BNB. Teng said the hack hit Binance's own hot wallet, not customer funds.
On transparency, Binance plans to publish a full proof of reserves report by Monday, with an initial view before then. For $ETH specifically, CoinDesk's review of Binance's 1 October proof of reserves found one of the emptied wallets was among those used to back customer assets, and the roughly 204,500 ETH taken would leave ETH backing near 94% until the gap is filled.
CNBC reported that Binance said a security incident impacted about $6.3 billion in client assets, with around $3 billion frozen on-chain, marking the largest crypto hack on record. Stablecoin issuers played a central role. Tether and Circle quickly froze over $1.5 billion in USDT and 800 million USDC, helping bring total frozen funds to about $3 billion.
On the cause, Binance initially said the hack may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, but Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process. Teng said the investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual. Separately, Forbes reported that TRM Labs said about $6.36 billion left Binance wallets on 10 blockchains, most of it in roughly 20 minutes, and blamed North Korea's TraderTraitor group.
The next tests for the exchange are when withdrawals reopen, whether outflows stay calm, and whether the updated proof of reserves shows the missing assets replaced. Binance has said it will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
Decrypt: Binance Sets Aside $6.34B to Cover Hack LossesCNBC: $6.3 Billion Binance Hack Is Largest Crypto Theft on RecordForbes: Binance $6.3 Billion Crypto Hack, What Happened
