- Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on November 3 that the exchange is financially sound and has replaced 95% of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen in last week’s hack, the largest crypto heist on record.
- Customers withdrew a net $4.72 billion, about 3% of platform assets, while the FBI blamed North Korea’s TraderTraitor unit, an attribution Pyongyang denies.
- The situation will test whether the biggest exchange can absorb a record loss without hitting customer balances.
Speaking in Hong Kong, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the exchange was in a strong financial position. He said it had replaced 95% of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen in last week’s hack, the largest on record. Teng also reassured users that their funds were safe.
Teng at Hong Kong Fintech Week
Teng made the comments on Tuesday at Hong Kong Fintech Week. He said deposits and withdrawals had mostly returned to normal, with a full review of the hack to be released later.
Reuters quoted Teng as calling the hack a painful lesson and saying Binance took responsibility for it. He added that customer funds were safe and the company would come out of the incident stronger.
Binance processes about $95 billion worth of crypto and derivatives trades each day. The exchange also claims it services over 335 million users worldwide.
Where the money to cover losses comes from
Teng added that the stolen assets were covered using the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), in addition to other company funds set aside for the purpose. SAFU is a Bitcoin reserve Binance created in 2018, originally worth about $1 billion.
The 95% recovery covers tokens that are easier to buy and sell. The remaining 5%, which will prove relatively hard to acquire, will be replaced using private traders instead of buying them on public exchanges.
Reuters reported that Binance had replaced 90% of the stolen funds by November 1. That figure rose to 95% by November 3. The exchange has also set aside about $6.34 billion to cover the losses, a figure slightly more than the amount stolen.
The exchange has, however, not released an audited report showing where the money is held. So far, its claims about its financial health are based partly on its own statements.
Binance added that customers withdrew a net figure of $4.72 billion by November 2, about 3% of the assets held on the exchange. Most of the withdrawals were made in Tether’s USDT stablecoin, Reuters reported.
FBI points at North Korea, Pyongyang denies
North Korean hacking group linked to the Lazarus Group, TraderTraitor, has received the bulk of the blame from the FBI in a statement issued on October 31. The bureau also said the group was behind the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, which was the biggest crypto hack at the time. The attackers are reportedly converting the stolen funds into ETH and using DeFi platforms and instant-swap services to cover their tracks.
Tether, Circle, Ripple, Arbitrum and Optimism have frozen about $2.85 billion of the stolen funds, The Next Web reported.
North Korea denied the claims. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, called the FBI’s findings “absurd rhetoric and nothing new” in a statement released by North Korean state media on Tuesday.
The breach itself
Blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs found that most of the theft was done in about 20 minutes, and funds were pushed across 10 different blockchains. The drain started shortly after 20:00 GMT on October 29, according to Reuters.
Binance has not publicly named any culprit of its own. The company first traced the breach to an engineer’s compromised laptop, then found other possible ways the attackers got in. However, it said there was no sign that wallet private keys had been stolen. The incident has once again raised questions about whether users should keep their crypto on exchanges.
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Opeyemi Olanrewaju
Opeyemi specializes in creating and refining high-quality content focused on cryptocurrency, global financial markets and the economy. He graduated from the University of Ibadan with an MBBS degree. He has worked as Editor-in-Chief for his College’s editorial publication and previously at CFA. For over six years, he has helped safeguard uniqueness as news editor at Cryptopolitan.
