Money Flows Out as Trading Resumes
In a post on X, Binance said that between 06:00 and 15:30 GMT on November 1 it processed $4.649 billion in withdrawals and $1.01 billion in deposits, leaving a net outflow of about $3.64 billion. There was an "initial spike" in withdrawals, the company said, which later declined and is "stabilising as expected." The net outflow is just over 2% of the $171bn of assets under its management.
Withdrawals of more than two dozen major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have resumed. Binance says more services will return in phases once security checks are complete.
Covering the Losses
The company says it has covered around 95% of the assets stolen in the breach, though the remainder may take longer to source. It replaced customers' assets using several sources, including its corporate treasury, its futures insurance fund and emergency reserve funds. Last week it said it had set aside more than $6.34bn to deal with the fallout. "Our commitment remains the same: Binance will fully cover the financial impact of the funds stolen in this incident," the firm said.
North Korea Blamed
Major organisations, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have accused North Korea of carrying out what is said to be the largest hack in history. The attack has been attributed to TraderTraitor, a North Korean cybercrime group also known as the Lazarus Group, which stole a then-record $1.5bn from the Bybit exchange in 2025. On Saturday the FBI published a list of cryptocurrency wallet addresses linked to the group and urged industry partners to block transactions involving them. Binance also scrambled to ask crypto issuers to freeze the affected assets.
Early checks suggest the incident may have started with a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer, which gave the hackers a way to make unauthorised transactions. The breach hit the global exchange Binance.com, while its US-facing platform said it was not affected. Binance was founded in China and has hundreds of millions of registered users worldwide.
