Yesterday we flagged a suspected drain from Binance hot wallets, with estimates from $2.5B to $5.8B and no confirmation. In the last 24 hours the picture firmed up: the hack is confirmed, the size is clearer, Binance has said who pays, and investigators have named a suspect.

The size:

  • TRM Labs puts the theft at about $6.36B, moved out of Binance wallets on 10 blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes from 20:05 UTC Thursday. Chainalysis puts it at about $6.4B.

  • That makes it the largest crypto theft on record, roughly four times the $1.5B Bybit hack of Feb 2025.

Who (per the analytics firms):

  • TRM ("high confidence") and Chainalysis both attribute it to TraderTraitor, the North Korean group the FBI blamed for Bybit.

  • Chainalysis says it saw stolen Binance funds commingling in real time with proceeds of last month's Bitget exploit. North Korea has denied past hacking allegations.

How:

  • On Ethereum, the attacker used an EIP-7702 delegation to turn a Binance hot wallet into a sweeper, with 50 pre-signed authorizations prepared in advance (TRM).

  • On the other nine chains, funds left through ordinary signed transfers, which TRM reads as a compromise of Binance's hot-wallet signing infrastructure.

  • Binance says its investigation began with a compromised engineer's laptop and has since found "additional points of breach".

Who pays:

  • Binance says it has reserved more than $6.34B of company funds to cover user losses. About $5B is already held in the exact tokens that were stolen; the rest is being bought via market and OTC, which may take longer for low-liquidity tokens. Frozen assets are not counted in that figure.

Frozen vs still loose:

  • Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial froze about $2.67B in stablecoins, and Arbitrum's Security Council froze 8,426 ETH and 74.6M ARB (TRM). Binance puts the total frozen at about $3B.

  • The attacker still holds more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, about $2.4B beyond any issuer's reach.

What to watch next:

  • Withdrawals are still paused. Co-CEO Richard Teng is targeting a restart by Sunday, within about 40 hours of his Friday remarks, but only if the rebuilt withdrawal service passes testing (The Defiant).

  • Teng also promised a full Proof of Reserves report by Monday.

  • Any large sales of the unfrozen ETH and BTC would hit spot liquidity.

The tape (Binance spot, 16:40 UTC Oct 30, 24h):

  • $BNB 702.06 (-6.3%), 24h low 680.00

  • $BTC 77,566 (-4.8%), 24h low 76,500

  • $ETH 2,238.47 (-5.1%), 24h low 2,174 Snapshot only, not proof of cause.

My take: the reserve number and the Monday PoR report matter more than any screenshot. If withdrawals reopen on schedule and the PoR checks out, the worst-case fear fades. If the date slips, expect another leg of stress.

Are you waiting for the PoR report, or already positioned?

Source: https://tradeassi.com/en/news/d870afcf-e522-4a38-aa59-68b03028fc36

Not financial advice. DYOR.