Binance Pledges To Cover All Losses After Record $6.3B Hack

Binance has reserved more than $6.3 billion in company funds to cover losses from the record hack on the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, co-CEO Richard Teng said on Friday.

Abu Dhabi's Financial Services Regulatory Authority, which issued Binance's main operating license, said it was "engaging closely with Binance and monitoring the incident," Reuters reported.

Teng said $5 billion of the reserved funds is already held in the same token assets that were hit, and the company is buying the rest through market and over-the-counter channels.

"We NEVER use any customer funds, so they are not impacted," Teng said in a post on X.

$3 billion of the stolen assets has been frozen with the help of industry partners. Binance said customer funds would be verified publicly through its proof of reserves, with a full report due by Monday, and that withdrawals were expected to resume by Sunday.

Nigel Green, CEO of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said in seen by Forbes Middle East that the speed of the attack marked a new phase in financial security.

"Bitcoin's code was never touched," Green said. "Artificial intelligence (AI) lets attackers plan and strike at machine speed, so the defenses around money have to move just as fast, at exchanges, at banks, and for anyone holding assets themselves."

Georgy Kucherin, senior security researcher at Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), said in seen by Forbes Middle East that the scale of the operation made state-linked involvement plausible.

"The Binance attack appears to be the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, and an operation of this scale would be difficult to carry out, so the possibility that some exchange hacks may in fact be the work of advanced persistent threat (APT) actors cannot be ruled out," Kucherin said. "Early reports regarding the Binance incident point to the possible involvement of various groups, with some specifically mentioning the Lazarus APT group."

He added that Lazarus is known for financially motivated cyberattacks, including operations targeting cryptocurrency, and has extensive experience in the sector. However, he said that final conclusions can only be drawn once the investigation is done.

Hackers attack Binance

Hackers stole $6.3 billion from Binance, by the exchange's estimate, in what analysts described as the biggest financial heist in history, Reuters reported.

Most of the assets were moved out in 20 minutes, starting late on Thursday, according to blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs.

Teng described the breach as a complex attack involving more than one person. He said it may have involved a compromised laptop, though later checks uncovered additional points of breach, and that the attacker used a self-destruct tool that wiped its own tooling and traces as it went, making the attack harder to trace and investigate.

The attacker obtained approval to move money out of a Binance-controlled, internet-connected wallet without passing through normal approval controls, Teng said.

Binance is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Secret Service, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters.

North Korea suspected

TRM Labs said it was highly confident that North Korea was responsible for the attack, while Jonathan Levin, CEO of blockchain research firm Chainalysis, said on X it was likely the work of TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group.

Several features of the attack matched earlier North Korea-linked heists, including a 2025 attack on crypto exchange Bybit that the FBI attributed to North Korea, TRM said. The Bybit attack resulted in losses of $1.5 billion.

North Korea has used state-linked cyber units for espionage, financial theft, and revenue generation for many years, according to US and South Korean authorities and cybersecurity experts cited by Reuters. However, Pyongyang routinely denies the allegations.

Stablecoin issuers freeze stolen funds

Tether froze nearly $1.6 billion in assets linked to the incident, while Circle froze more than $800 million, Reuters reported. Ripple helped halt around $200 million, according to Binance co-CEO Yi He.

According to TRM Labs, hackers withdrew $6.4 billion, at the prices when the assets were taken, in USDT, Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, TRX, Solana, and other cryptocurrencies across 10 blockchains.

Binance did not provide an update on the status of the remaining $3.3 billion, Reuters reported.

The company has a $1 billion Bitcoin reserve fund, the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), designed to protect customer assets in the event of security breaches, according to its website.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance's founder, said on X that the company owns SpaceX shares worth more than $1 billion, Reuters reported.

Zhao, who lives in Dubai, has a real-time net worth of $114.6 billion as of October 30, 2026, according to Forbes estimates.

In a later post on Friday, Zhao said the hack was the biggest in dollar terms but not in Bitcoin terms, noting that 650,000 Bitcoin were lost in the hack of Mt. Gox, once the largest crypto exchange.

Bitcoin hit a six-week low of $76,368, Reuters reported, before recovering to $77,795 at 9:55 PM UAE time on Friday, according to CoinMarketCap.

Ether dropped more than 3% to $2,178, its lowest in two months, before markets stabilized, Reuters reported. BNB, a token originally launched as Binance Coin that can be used to pay Binance fees, traded at $717.5, according to CoinMarketCap.

Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey Group, said the hack could further dampen risk appetite and lead investors to reassess the safety of assets held on centralized exchanges, Reuters reported.

The total crypto market fell 1.9% over 24 hours to $2.6 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.