Author: angelilu, Foresight News
On October 30, Binance announced preliminary losses of approximately $6.3 billion from the security incident and said it would use the SAFU Fund and company funds to fully cover user losses. The next question worth asking is: How much do these two sources of funds amount to, and can they make up for the transferred assets in time?
Binance previously disclosed that approximately $3 billion in frozen funds had been verified. If all of these assets are ultimately returned, about $3.3 billion would still need to be made up through other means, based on the preliminary loss estimate of $6.3 billion. Before the assets are returned, Binance will also need to prepare sufficient available funds to meet demand once withdrawals resume.
Where might the money come from? Binance’s public disclosures of its SAFU fund, proof of reserves, and wallet inventories offer several leads to investigate.
SAFU bought $1 billion in Bitcoin, but the gains have been limited
Binance established the SAFU user protection fund for extreme events such as hacks. It is the most readily identifiable source of funds to cover compensation in this incident.
On February 12 this year, Binance completed its plan to convert about $1 billion in stablecoins into Bitcoin. It disclosed that SAFU held 15,000 BTC, worth about $1.005 billion at approximately $67,000 per coin when the conversion was completed.
Assuming SAFU still holds 15,000 BTC, at today’s estimated price of $77,000 per coin, the fund would be worth about $1.155 billion—an increase of about $150 million, or roughly 14.9%, since the conversion was completed.
Binance previously pledged to top up SAFU to $1 billion if its value fell below $800 million. Based on the holdings above, the trigger price would be about $53,300 per BTC. Using this year’s BTC low of $57,802, the fund would still be worth about $867 million, above the top-up threshold. This article therefore uses the value of the previously disclosed holdings. Whether Binance has added funds voluntarily, and whether the fund has already been used in this incident, still needs to be verified.
Even if the entire $1.155 billion were used for compensation, and all $3 billion in frozen funds were eventually returned, about $2.145 billion would still need to come from other sources.
The proof of reserves does show some additional cushion
Beyond SAFU, Binance’s proof-of-reserves page also discloses the amounts by which some assets exceed users’ net account balances.
At the time of this review, the latest available snapshot was dated October 1, 2026, at 00:00 UTC. “Net account balance” refers to the net value of user assets calculated by Binance under its proof-of-reserves methodology, while “on-chain wallet balance” refers to the amount held in wallets backing those assets. Subtracting the former from the latter shows how much publicly disclosed reserves exceeded users’ net account balances at the time of the snapshot.
The excess amounts of USDT and USDC totaled about $1.836 billion. The excess BTC amounted to 2,430.913 coins, worth about $187 million at $77,000 per coin. ETH balances almost exactly matched users’ net account balances.
This article also compiled the wallet files Binance made publicly available for download on October 1. The balances of BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC all matched those on the proof-of-reserves page. However, these figures reflect the situation at the beginning of the month. User deposits and withdrawals, trading, and internal platform transfers over the nearly month since then could all have changed these surpluses.
Binance also notes on the page that excess assets at proof-of-reserves addresses do not represent the total value of its own assets. Therefore, this table shows some of the reserve cushion but cannot replace the company’s complete financial statements.
Nearly $6.3 billion on paper—but the funds still need to be available
According to Binance, SAFU is an emergency fund for extreme situations, disclosed separately from user asset reserves.
If SAFU is valued at $1.155 billion, and the roughly $1.836 billion in excess USDT and USDC balances at the beginning of the month, the approximately $187 million in excess BTC, and about $3 billion in frozen assets are added together, the mechanical total is about $6.178 billion—enough to match the loss disclosed in the initial report of the incident.
But this calculation is only useful for understanding the scale. The $6.178 billion figure is simply the arithmetic sum of several publicly available figures: SAFU uses holdings disclosed earlier, excess reserves use a snapshot from the beginning of the month, and the frozen amount comes from tracking conducted after the incident. The total has not been fully reconciled for a common point in time, address scope, or availability, and cannot be treated as compensation funds Binance has already set aside.
The biggest timing gap concerns the frozen assets.
Freezing prevents the attacker from moving the funds further, reducing the ultimate loss that cannot be recovered. But Binance must still complete the relevant return procedures before it can regain access to those assets. If withdrawals resume first, the platform will need to meet user demand with other available funds.
Internal transfers can address some liquidity needs. For example, transferring funds from cold wallets to hot wallets can replenish the balance available for withdrawals. But after an attack reduces the platform’s overall assets, moving funds between its own wallets cannot make up for the loss in total assets.
Making up for this portion of the loss requires recovering the assets, using the company’s own funds, or obtaining external financial support. Binance has not yet fully disclosed which methods it will ultimately use or how much each will contribute.
Past profits may provide another financial cushion
Beyond SAFU and publicly disclosed reserves, Binance may also be able to draw on its own funds accumulated over years of operations. If the profits remaining after an exchange collects fees and pays operating costs are retained by the company, they can serve as a source of funds to cover losses.
Binance has previously disclosed some of its profit figures. In December 2020, then-CEO Changpeng Zhao told Bloomberg that Binance had earned about $570 million in 2019 and was expected to earn $800 million to $1 billion for full-year 2020. These historical disclosures show that Binance was already capable of earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year, even when its business was much smaller.
In the past, the market also estimated Binance’s profits based on the quarterly BNB burn amount. Under the original rule linking burns to 20% of quarterly profits, research firms could multiply the burn amount by five to estimate the corresponding profit. In a 2019 study, 21Shares used this method to estimate Binance’s 2018 profit at about $447 million, while clearly noting that this was only an estimate of financial performance.
As the burn rules changed, this line of analysis gradually became less reliable. In December 2021, Binance announced the introduction of BNB Auto-Burn, which automatically calculates the amount to be burned based on factors such as the price of BNB and the number of blocks produced each quarter. Binance also made clear that the mechanism is independent of revenue generated by BNB on its centralized exchange. As a result, the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in burn value cited in recent announcements can no longer be converted into Binance profits using a fixed multiplier, nor do they show how much cash the company actually spent.
The financial results of a peer can provide a point of reference. Coinbase reported net profit of about $1.26 billion for full-year 2025 and about $2.579 billion for 2024. This shows that large crypto trading platforms can accumulate profits in the billions of dollars in profitable years, and retained earnings may provide an important financial buffer beyond an emergency fund.
However, there is still insufficient basis for treating Coinbase’s profits directly as a lower bound for Binance’s earnings. Beyond trading volume, actual fee levels, the composition of business revenue, operating costs, and investment gains or losses all affect final profit. Coinbase’s figures can help illustrate the scale of profitability in the industry, but determining how much Binance itself has accumulated that could be used to compensate users still requires supporting financial disclosures.
In addition, the personal wealth of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is another potential source of support attracting public attention. Forbes estimated his net worth at about $114.6 billion as of October 29, 2026, with wealth derived from Binance equity and BNB holdings. Zhao stepped down as Binance CEO in 2023 but remains a shareholder. This net worth includes equity and token valuations, and the amount of cash he could access immediately has not been disclosed. Using it to support compensation in this incident would also require an actual funding arrangement, so it cannot be counted directly as funds Binance currently has available to cover losses.