Binance Allocates $6.34B for Hack Losses, CEO Assures Users of Asset Safety

Binance to Cover All Losses from Recent Hack with Company Funds

New York, NY – October 30, 2026 – Binance CEO Richard Teng announced Friday that the cryptocurrency exchange will fully reimburse all customer losses stemming from a recent hack, utilizing its own corporate funds. Teng emphasized in a video address that customer assets were never compromised during the incident.

“We are committed to covering all hacked losses through our company funds. Your assets are safe,” Teng stated, according to a transcript he shared on social media.

Binance has earmarked over $6.34 billion in company reserves to cover the stolen assets. Of this amount, $5 billion is already held in the exact cryptocurrencies that were taken, including USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH, and BNB. The exchange is in the process of acquiring the remaining funds through market and over-the-counter transactions.

Teng clarified that the hack targeted Binance’s own hot wallet, not customer funds. “We never use any customer funds, so they are not impacted,” he explained, noting that the majority of user assets are secured in cold wallets and only transferred to a hot wallet for withdrawal purposes. The exchange’s capacity to absorb such a significant loss is attributed to its practice of maintaining a substantial portion of its operating earnings in cryptocurrency.

Previously, Binance had stated its intention to cover all losses through its SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users) emergency fund and company capital.

Attackers Exploited Ethereum Feature, Investigation Ongoing

The hack, Teng revealed, was not the work of a single individual. While initial investigations pointed to a compromised laptop, Binance has since identified “additional points of breach.” The attacker also employed a self-destruct mechanism that erased tools and traces, complicating the investigation.

According to Teng, the perpetrator utilized EIP-7702, an Ethereum feature that allows standard wallets to execute smart contract code. This enabled the attacker to gain on-chain execution approval over a hot wallet, bypassing Binance’s standard approval controls. This security lapse led to Binance temporarily pausing withdrawals to rebuild and retest its infrastructure. Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis have attributed the theft to the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor.

Binance aims to restore withdrawal services before its self-imposed Sunday deadline and is conducting a comprehensive security review encompassing endpoints, cloud infrastructure, key management, and signing processes. A full proof of reserves report is slated for publication by Monday, with an initial overview expected sooner.

The attacker continues to move funds. Between 11:37 a.m. and 12:12 p.m. ET on Friday, a Tron wallet identified by Arkham as belonging to the hacker transferred approximately 5.19 million TRX, valued at roughly $1.73 million, to 12 different addresses, according to Arkham data.

Aave Unfreezes Markets After Precautionary Measures

Decentralized lending protocol Aave announced Friday that it has unfrozen all markets on its V3 and V4 deployments. These markets were temporarily frozen as a precautionary measure following initial reports of the hack, which halted new deposits and borrowing while allowing withdrawals and repayments to continue.

TRM Labs reported that the attacker had borrowed ETH against USDT on Aave while navigating stablecoin freezes. Aave founder Stani Kulechov wrote that the protocol “was unaffected, and all positions remain overcollateralized.”

Comparison to Past Crypto Thefts

Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao commented that while the $6.3 billion loss is the largest in dollar terms, it is not the largest in Bitcoin terms, referencing Mt. Gox’s loss of 650,000 BTC. Unlike the Mt. Gox and FTX incidents, where nearly all users were impacted, Zhao noted that Binance is absorbing the losses itself. “It hurts, but we survive,” he wrote.