Binance Co-CEO: Aiming to restore withdrawals before Sunday’s deadline; plans to publish full proof of reserves next Monday
Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng posted an update on the company’s security incident, saying Binance has committed to covering all stolen funds with its own capital and has set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds. Of this amount, $5 billion is held in the same currencies as the affected assets, including USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH and BNB. The remaining tokens needed are being purchased through market and OTC channels.
He stressed that the incident affected Binance’s own hot wallets and that customer funds were not impacted. The vast majority of user assets are stored in cold wallets and are transferred to hot wallets only when users withdraw them. He explained that most of the company’s day-to-day earnings are held in crypto assets, and that retaining and reinvesting them over the long term has enabled Binance to cover a loss of this scale immediately with its own funds.
Regarding the investigation, Richard Teng said this was not an attack carried out by a single person. The initial investigation pointed to a compromised laptop, but further points of intrusion have since been discovered. The attackers also used self-destruct mechanisms to erase tools and traces, making them harder to track. He said the attackers used EIP-7702 to obtain on-chain execution authorization for the hot wallet, and that the relevant delegation had bypassed normal approval controls.
Binance is currently rebuilding its withdrawal services, which will be restored only after they pass rigorous testing. Richard Teng said the company hopes to resume user withdrawals within 40 hours, before Sunday’s deadline. Meanwhile, Binance is conducting a comprehensive security review of its endpoints, cloud environments, key management and signing systems.
Regarding proof of reserves, Binance plans to publish a full PoR report on Monday and aims to provide preliminary data for public verification before then. The company is also working with law enforcement agencies, blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers and other trading platforms to continue tracing and recovering the stolen funds.
Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng posted an update on the company’s security incident, saying Binance has committed to covering all stolen funds with its own capital and has set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds. Of this amount, $5 billion is held in the same currencies as the affected assets, including USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH and BNB. The remaining tokens needed are being purchased through market and OTC channels.
He stressed that the incident affected Binance’s own hot wallets and that customer funds were not impacted. The vast majority of user assets are stored in cold wallets and are transferred to hot wallets only when users withdraw them. He explained that most of the company’s day-to-day earnings are held in crypto assets, and that retaining and reinvesting them over the long term has enabled Binance to cover a loss of this scale immediately with its own funds.
Regarding the investigation, Richard Teng said this was not an attack carried out by a single person. The initial investigation pointed to a compromised laptop, but further points of intrusion have since been discovered. The attackers also used self-destruct mechanisms to erase tools and traces, making them harder to track. He said the attackers used EIP-7702 to obtain on-chain execution authorization for the hot wallet, and that the relevant delegation had bypassed normal approval controls.
Binance is currently rebuilding its withdrawal services, which will be restored only after they pass rigorous testing. Richard Teng said the company hopes to resume user withdrawals within 40 hours, before Sunday’s deadline. Meanwhile, Binance is conducting a comprehensive security review of its endpoints, cloud environments, key management and signing systems.
Regarding proof of reserves, Binance plans to publish a full PoR report on Monday and aims to provide preliminary data for public verification before then. The company is also working with law enforcement agencies, blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers and other trading platforms to continue tracing and recovering the stolen funds.