$5.8 billion leaves Binance after the hack; ETFs bleed $640 million; BTC falls just 3%
At 23:59 on November 1, Cointelegraph updated its figures for net outflows after Binance resumed withdrawals: $5.8 billion. Work out for yourself what share of Binance’s roughly $171 billion in customer assets that represents. In another message that same night at 23:09, the figure was still 3.64 billion. In just a few hours, it was up by more than 2 billion. The withdrawal rush is real. But Bitcoin only fell 3%. When Binance was hacked in 2018, BTC fell nearly 11%. This time, hackers made off with $6.4 billion—the biggest heist in history—yet the price didn’t crash. Does that seem contradictory? First, let’s look at the ETFs. At 16:01 on November 1, Decrypt reported $643.2 million in net outflows from Bitcoin ETFs in a single day—the first full trading day after the hack. For all of October, ETFs saw net outflows of about $516 million.
Can $630 million buy back trust? Binance says first-phase withdrawals are now open, and 90% of the stolen assets have been recovered. The rest consists of low-liquidity tokens that are hard to buy back, and they’re still slowly sourcing them through over-the-counter trades. The FBI pointed the finger at North Korea, and the Secret Service joined the investigation. Circle froze $823 million, while Binance set aside $6.34 billion to plug the hole. The whole process has been pretty coordinated, but now that withdrawals are open, whether people run is up to users to decide with their feet. Strive’s Matt Cole said BTC held up better than he expected during this wave. I’m watching to see how many people are still willing to keep their coins on exchanges after that remaining 10% is recovered.$BTC $ETH
BNB Smart Chain · 10,000 units · Approx. 1U each • Max. 10 units per wallet; no presale, no team allocation • 80% goes into the PancakeSwap pool; LP burned • The 10,000th mint automatically opens the pool; opening price = mint price • No owner, no tax, non-upgradable
The moment Musk mocked Binance over the $6.3 billion theft, CZ fired back with an old score to settle: Binance’s $500 million investment in the Twitter acquisition is now worth more than $1 billion in SpaceX shares. That was a brutal clapback—basically a reminder of who’s holding whose cards.
But putting these two things side by side is pretty absurd. On one hand, there’s the $630 million heist that the FBI attributed to North Korea: Richard Teng said the attackers used EIP-7702 delegation and a self-destruct mechanism to bypass normal approvals. Binance recovered 90% of the stolen assets; the rest was in illiquid tokens. On the other hand, there are two billionaires publicly trying to outdo each other over who’s richer. The hacking case has turned into a personal feud. While Tether and Circle scramble to freeze assets and Coinbase leads crypto stocks lower, they’re tallying up SpaceX’s value.
What I’m watching is when that remaining 10% will be recovered, and whether any other exchanges were hit by this EIP-7702 vulnerability. $BTC $ETH
The $6.3 billion theft: three parties, three agendas
At 9:16 p.m. on October 30, CFTC Chair Michael Selig posted a line on X: “This $6.4 billion Binance theft proves that offshore exchanges must register in the United States.” He included a link to Decrypt’s report. That afternoon, Binance had just disclosed the largest hack in history—roughly $6.3 billion to $6.4 billion in assets had been transferred out. The attackers were reportedly linked to North Korea and used EIP-7702 delegation and a self-destruct mechanism to bypass approval. Selig reacted even faster than the on-chain fund transfers. He wasn’t just talking about registration, but also “U.S.-grade cybersecurity standards.” Offshore exchanges aren’t under CFTC jurisdiction, so this case wasn’t really his to weigh in on. But with the election just ten days away, everyone wants to grab the microphone.
Bitcoin turns 18 today, and its birthday gift is $6.3 billion stolen from Binance. On-chain investigators say the attacker is linked to North Korea. Tether and Circle froze billions of dollars, Binance covered 90% of the loss itself, and the remaining low-liquidity tokens are still being slowly bought over the counter. The same day, Coinbase led a sell-off in a batch of crypto stocks. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said offshore exchanges should register and meet U.S.-level security standards. Strive CEO Matt Cole, meanwhile, thinks BTC has held up better than expected, but says it’s too early to call a bottom.
I’m watching another thread: the quantum threat has gone from a topic in research papers to an economic issue, while AI-powered attack methods are evolving in parallel. The adversaries Bitcoin faces at 18 are nothing like those that rebellious teenager faced back then.
An industry that needed a $6.3 billion tuition bill to force it to discuss custody and compliance—when the day comes that quantum computers can actually strike, will it respond faster than it did this time? $BTC $ETH
90% has been recovered. Why is the remaining 10% so hard to make up? Binance said it itself: the shortfall is in illiquid tokens, which can only be bought up one by one on the market and over the counter. The attacker siphoned about $6.4 billion from the exchange this time, Binance set aside $6.34 billion to cover the losses, Circle froze $823 million, and the FBI and Secret Service also joined the chase. The numbers look reassuring, but the hardest part of the compensation ledger isn’t how much was frozen—it’s those coins nobody wants to take off your hands. Stablecoins can be paused by their issuers, but who can hit pause on obscure tokens? Richard Teng said the attacker used EIP-7702 delegation and a self-destruct mechanism to bypass approval. I believe the claim that assets are safe only halfway; the other half depends on when the remaining 10% is made up. $BTC $ETH
Chainalysis itself was hit by a cybersecurity incident, and now it’s bringing in “world-class third-party experts” to conduct a security review. It sounds like dark comedy—the company’s job is to provide on-chain forensics for exchanges and law enforcement, and now its own forensic tools have become an attack surface. Go back two days: in the $6.3 billion Binance theft, the FBI and Secret Service both got involved in tracing the assets. Binance said about $3 billion had been frozen, with Tether and Circle helping lock up the stablecoins. In this law-enforcement chain, intelligence firms like Chainalysis are the ones mapping the flow of funds. I’ve been watching this figure for a while: in a $6.3 billion case, the freezing was done by issuers and exchanges, while the forensics were handled by an outside company. So when the auditors themselves are being audited, can exchange risk teams still accept the address labels they’re given at face value? $BTC $ETH
Zcash Community Grants plans to redirect around $124 million in existing and future funds to subsidize mining rewards. Critics say the proposal completely sidesteps governance and accountability. In a privacy coin community whose treasury spending is determined by proposals from a grants committee, the structure itself raises questions. I’ve been watching this figure for a while: $124 million is no small sum, but the core questions it avoids are who decides, who audits, and who takes responsibility if something goes wrong. Compare this with the earlier Euronext move to halt the Zcash ETP: regulators were concerned about disclosure and custody, while the community is concerned about the spending decision-making process. Both sides are really blocked by the same issue. $ZEC
The Race to Freeze $6.3 Billion in Stolen Funds: Hackers Move Fast on Stablecoins
$6.3 billion. That’s how much was stolen from Binance this time—the largest heist in crypto history. It happened on October 30. The attackers used EIP-7702 delegation and the self-destruct mechanism to bypass Binance’s standard approval controls. What is EIP-7702? Simply put, it lets regular Ethereum wallets execute smart contract code, enabling things like batch transactions and gas sponsorship. It’s certainly convenient—but this time, it was also used as a launchpad for the attack. As soon as they got their hands on the funds, the hackers began converting the stablecoins into assets their issuers couldn’t freeze. Tether and Circle weren’t idle either—they moved to freeze billions of dollars. Circle alone froze $823 million.
$6.3 billion was stolen, but Bitcoin only fell 3%. A similar incident in 2018 sent it down nearly 11%. That’s because little of the stolen money can get away this time: Circle froze $823 million, Binance says it has frozen about $3 billion and also set aside equivalent assets worth $6.34 billion to cover the losses, and the FBI and Secret Service have gotten involved. The attackers bypassed approvals using EIP-7702 delegation combined with a self-destruct mechanism. Richard Teng says users’ assets are safe. I don’t think this means the market has become more rational; it’s that the losses this time have been absorbed by the exchange and stablecoin issuer, and ETF holders didn’t immediately join the sell-off. But frozen funds can be returned—who will fix the approval logic that was bypassed? $BTC $ETH
EIP-7702 lets regular wallets execute contract code. Attackers used it to add a self-destruct mechanism and bypass Binance’s approval controls. Richard Teng said so himself. An upgrade meant for batch transactions and gas sponsorship was turned into a withdrawal channel. Binance set aside $6.34 billion to cover losses and said it holds $5 billion worth of tokens that will be included in its next proof of reserves. As for recovery, about $3 billion was frozen. Tether and Circle acted before the attacker could swap the stablecoins for assets that can’t be frozen, and the FBI and Secret Service also got involved. My take is simple: once wallets can run contracts, the approval gate is no longer something an exchange can unilaterally close. $ETH $BNB
When you buy a hardware wallet from a third-party reseller, how can you know when you unbox it that it still has the original firmware? Trezor has asked users who bought devices from CryptoBilis since March to move their funds immediately, following a report that a Safe 5 had been implanted with a hardware backdoor. Trezor hasn’t inspected the device itself yet, but treated the report as credible and told users to move their funds first. The sequence reveals the problem: a manufacturer’s chain of verification ends at the factory. After that, at every stage—reseller, warehouse, courier—someone could swap out what’s inside. I’ve been thinking about the trust model behind hardware wallets for a while. The security story of cold wallets has always been built on the idea that “private keys never go online.” But even if the keys stay offline, the circuitry that signs transactions is handed to you by someone else. A supply-chain attack doesn’t need to crack your password; it just needs one extra chip soldered onto the assembly line. When you buy a cold wallet, what are you really buying: the device itself, or the reseller chain you can’t see? $BTC
$6.3 billion was drained from Binance, of which about $3 billion has been frozen. Tether and Circle froze another $1.8 billion, yet UNI still fell 5.1% that day. Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered said the incident would accelerate the flow of funds from centralized exchanges to DEXs, and reiterated his $100 UNI forecast for 2030. I’ve been watching this figure for a while, and the problem is that the narrative and the price are completely out of sync: the hacker is converting freezeable stablecoins into ETH through decentralized trading channels, yet UNI hasn’t risen. Funds moving to DEXs doesn’t mean fees end up in UNI holders’ pockets; governance and the fee switch stand between the two. Kendrick’s $100 forecast is about 2030. The only thing we can verify right now is that UNI ranks 26th by market cap. $UNI $BNB
Could a DevOps engineer’s laptop be worth $6.3 billion? That’s how much was stolen from Binance this time. TRM Labs gave a high-confidence attribution pointing to North Korea’s TraderTraitor, and ZachXBT also found that funds stolen from Binance and Bitget converged at the same address. About $3 billion has been frozen; Tether and Circle froze $1.8 billion, while the rest was swapped into ETH on-chain in search of an exit. I’ve been watching this case for a while, and the more I look at it, the more I think the issue isn’t whether the private keys were lost, but how many internal permissions that laptop had access to—the supply chain and employee endpoints are the exchange’s real weak spots. Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered has already used this to make the case for UNI reaching $100 by 2030. BNB fell 8% that day, and BTC dropped to near 77K. How many more machines were connected through that one laptop? Who’s counting? $BNB $UNI
Polymarket halted trading after a third-party vendor was compromised. Arkham data shows that around $2.65 million in POL is sitting in a suspected attacker’s wallet. The leading prediction market stumbled because of an outsourced operation.
The pattern looks increasingly familiar: Binance said the $6.3 billion incident may have stemmed from an engineer’s hacked DevOps laptop, while Tether and Circle froze $1.8 billion; Singapore police began receiving tampered Ledgers on September 10. The points of entry are all people, machines, and hardware outside the platform.
So I don’t think this is a case of one company having poor risk controls. The moment you hand your signing authority, private keys, and operational permissions to a third party, your security perimeter is no longer yours. $POL