Binance Restores 90% of Record $6.3B Hack Losses as Crypto Markets Reel

Binance has restored 90 percent of the roughly $6.3 billion in crypto stolen from its customers in what analysts are calling the largest theft of any kind in history, with the exchange pledging to cover the remaining losses as well.

The company's CEO said the funds have been replaced, according to The Verge. The remaining 10 percent consists of "less liquid" tokens that may take longer to acquire, the company said. Binance also stated in a post on X that withdrawals remain paused but are on track to be enabled on Sunday, 2026-11-01.

"Our commitment remains the same: Binance will fully cover the financial impact of the funds stolen in this incident," the company said in the post. "We will continue to demonstrate this commitment through measurable progress, transparent reporting, and concrete actions."

The heist, which occurred Thursday and affected some $6.3 billion in client assets, is the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, according to CNBC. Binance said it found no evidence that unique user codes, known as "private keys," had been breached. In a post on X early Friday, Yi He said the exchange expected to allow withdrawals again "in the next 48 hours."

Freeze Efforts and Market Fallout

In a sign of the potential repercussions, Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of Tether, said his company had frozen about $1.5 billion of USDT, its dollar-linked stablecoin, according to Ars Technica. Jeremy Allaire, head of Circle, the second-biggest stablecoin issuer, said $800 million of its USDC coin had been frozen amid "reports of a potential exploit" at Binance.

Analytics firm Elliptic said it had verified $2.8 billion of frozen crypto—mostly USDT and USDC—but that the hackers had moved the remainder into assets that could not be frozen, such as the ETH crypto token. "This is almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history," Elliptic said.

The incident has raised fresh questions about the safety of storing funds in a wallet on a crypto exchange, CNBC reported. Earlier the same day, prediction market platform Polymarket temporarily halted trading on its international exchange after a third-party data provider was hacked, resulting in at least $2.7 million being drained from users' wallets.

Regulatory and Expert Reaction

Experts interviewed by CNBC said the security incidents aren't surprising, especially in light of recent artificial intelligence hacking incidents, and most said observers should expect more incidents in the near term.

"I think it's extremely dangerous," said Tyler Moore, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Tulsa. "I think you should be very wary of leaving any significant amount of funds in an exchange… there are no built-in protections for when these inevitable hacks take place."

Moore noted that banking customers can rely on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure deposits up to $250,000, but no similar coverage exists for funds lost from a cryptocurrency exchange.

Binance and Polymarket both reassured users they would make affected investors whole—a sign users should feel confident in crypto exchanges, according to Ido Ben-Natan, CEO of blockchain security company Blockaid. "I actually think no users will lose any money," he said. "Binance has said they're going to cover everything… I actually don't think it's a bad idea for users to put money in these exchanges."

A key point is that while Binance experienced a security incident on its offshore platform, its regulated, centralized U.S. exchange did not have a similar issue, CNBC reported. U.S. regulated platforms Coinbase and Robinhood were also unaffected, though shares of both fell on Friday in the aftermath.

In a Friday appearance on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street," Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig said the offshore nature of these incidents was critical to note. "They don't have the same sorts of safeguards that we have in our financial markets," he said. "We want to offer a federal option to these exchanges to come and register with the CFTC."

Brett Falk, a professor and director of the Crypto and Society Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, said U.S. regulations likely wouldn't have stopped the Binance incident, noting the hack may have involved a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop. "Most of the regulation doesn't touch the specific software stack you have to use to authenticate people," he said.

Governance Concerns

Beyond the technical theft, a deeper crisis lies in the widening discrepancy between the exchange's official disclosures and on-chain data, according to an analysis published on dev.to. The analysis said the incident signals a critical failure in corporate governance and information transparency, posing a systemic risk to the credibility of Centralized Exchanges acting as digital asset custodians.

The analysis noted the hacker's strategy demonstrated sophistication by targeting a diverse basket of altcoins rather than high-liquidity assets, using a "chain-hopping" methodology that exploits lower liquidity to fragment the trail of funds.

Binance, which has no official headquarters, was ordered to wind down its EU operations in July after failing to secure a license under the bloc's new regulatory framework, Ars Technica reported. The exchange became regulated in Abu Dhabi in December 2025 and had already agreed to block UK customers after being barred by Britain's financial watchdog in 2021.

Last month, nearly $390 million was stolen from crypto exchange Bitget, which reimbursed customers from its User Protection Fund. North Korean hackers stole about $2 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, a 50 percent increase from the year before, according to data from Chainalysis.