Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, spent last weekend dealing with the biggest theft the industry has seen. The attack hit late on Thursday, October 29, and affected $6.3 billion in funds, with roughly half of those assets frozen. Until now the record belonged to the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025.
Binance's own account of how it happened is short. It said a compromised laptop gave an attacker access to a service container, from which unauthorized withdrawal transactions were submitted. Blockchain analysts estimate that about $6.36 billion left Binance wallets across 10 blockchains, most of it within roughly 20 minutes. TRM Labs linked the attack to a North Korean state-sponsored group, and the FBI has tied the incident to North Korea as well.
Recovery is partial. Binance said about $3 billion had been frozen on-chain. Elliptic's chief scientist said about $3.24 billion remains in addresses linked to the theft. Binance's SAFU emergency fund, worth roughly $1.2 billion, could cover about a third of the remaining losses, with the exchange's own money covering the rest. Binance said on Sunday that it had covered 95% of the stolen assets and that users would not bear the losses. That promise is worth noting because funds held on exchanges are not automatically insured like bank deposits.
The test came when withdrawals reopened. Binance restored them in phases on Sunday, and in the hours that followed it processed $4.6 billion in withdrawals against $1.0 billion in deposits, a net outflow of $3.6 billion, or 2.1% of its assets under management. As of Sunday morning, Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals were still partially suspended. Customers moved a lot of money without anything resembling a bank run.
Bitcoin itself held up better than the headlines might suggest. It dipped to about $76,000 last week as the hack coincided with a tech-stock selloff on weak earnings, then recovered toward $78,000. On Monday morning it traded near $77,750, about 8.3% below a month earlier and nearly 30% below a year ago.
Institutional money is still cautious. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $643 million in net outflows on October 30, and Ethereum ETFs lost about $156 million. October as a whole ended with a net outflow of $515.03 million from Bitcoin ETFs, the first monthly outflow since June. Some buyers kept going regardless. Strategy bought 811 BTC for $65.5 million, taking its holdings to 849,327 BTC, and Strive added 124 BTC to reach 43,124.
The calendar has another event close by. The U.S. midterm elections are on November 3, and analysts watching the chart name $73,000 as key support and $75,000 as a possible buying zone. Seasonality offers a counterweight, since November has historically been a strong month for Bitcoin.
