Institutional crypto investors rush to pull funds from exchanges after Binance hack

Binance's October 29 breach follows the Bybit hack of 2025, which held the prior record at $1.5 billion before TraderTraitor-linked actors took roughly four times that from a single hot wallet. Binance used EIP-7702 delegation and a compromised signing process rather than classic private-key theft, a technique that let attackers authorise withdrawals without the usual approval controls the exchange relied on since earlier security overhauls.

Exchange customers saw withdrawals paused entirely, then reopened network by network, starting with Bitcoin and followed by USDT, USDC, ETH and BNB, while holders of less liquid tokens waited longest for access to their own funds. Tether, Circle and Ripple froze over $2.5 billion between them within hours, a move that protected users but also showed stablecoin issuers can lock funds unilaterally, for better or worse, whenever they judge it necessary.

Pledging $6.34 billion of company funds to make users whole is a reassurance, not a fix: it does not explain how a single wallet's signing authority could be hijacked for five months before any coin moved. Elliptic's tracking of 12,000 wallets across 11 chains in under four days shows laundering now outpaces freezing tools, which sits uneasily against crypto's founding promise of resistance to censorship and seizure.

Binance's full forensic report, promised after its October 29 disclosure, will determine whether the fake-interview recruitment scheme exploited a one-off lapse or a systemic gap in how exchanges vet engineering hires. Watch also the remaining token withdrawals Binance targeted for reopening by November 13, and whether the roughly $3.1 billion Elliptic says is still unlaundered gets frozen or finally moves.

BitcoinBTC it is the asset of the company or protocol in the event

Bitcoin rose 1.5% in the 4 hours after the first headline, after falling 1.9% in the 2 hours before.

47 prices, one every 30 minutes · The move was larger before the first headline than after: an observation, not an explanation. The market also moves on things nobody publishes.