Skip to main content
Uruguay Can

News from across crypto

Binance says it has replenished 90% of assets lost in hack

Binance says it has replenished 90% of assets affected by its $6.3 billion hack, with the remaining tokens harder to source and withdrawals targeted to resume Sunday.

Uruguay Can Editorial

Binance says it has replenished 90% of assets lost in hack

Binance says it has replenished 90% of assets affected by its $6.3 billion security breach, up from 80% on Friday. In its Saturday recovery update, the exchange said it would keep buying the remaining tokens and that it would absorb the loss rather than pass it to users.

The update follows Binance’s report that its hot wallets were compromised around 20:05 UTC on October 29, resulting in unauthorized withdrawals. The company said approximately $3 billion had been frozen on-chain. It has not yet published a full account of how the attack happened.

Which assets are still not fully covered?

Binance said BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and ZEC were fully backed at the time of the update. The outstanding 10% consists of tokens outside that group, which Binance described as less liquid and harder to source in the required amounts.

Binance said it was using a partial deployment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users, a portion of its futures insurance fund and its corporate treasury to replenish the affected assets. It also said it would restore SAFU to approximately $1 billion. Binance’s previous incident update said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion, including $5 billion in the affected tokens.

When could withdrawals resume?

Binance said it remained on track to reopen withdrawals on Sunday, November 1, subject to its security checks. Its update set out the next steps:

  1. Continue buying the remaining affected tokens through market and over-the-counter channels.
  2. Work with law enforcement, blockchain intelligence firms, issuers and exchanges to trace and recover frozen assets.
  3. Publish a technical post-mortem after the investigation, and provide an updated proof-of-reserves snapshot.

The exchange said it took a new proof-of-reserves snapshot at 00:00 UTC on October 31. It estimated that the full zero-knowledge proof, which users can use to verify their assets, would be ready by Tuesday, November 3.

Sources