Binance Hack: $6.3 Billion Stolen, and What Your Account Needs Now

The Binance hack on October 29 is now the largest crypto theft on record: about $6.3 billion taken from the exchange’s hot wallets in roughly 20 minutes. If you hold coins on Binance, the short answer is that the company says your balances are safe and it is covering the losses itself.

That still leaves things to check, and scammers are already using the news. Here is what happened, what Binance has promised, and what to do this week.

Quick facts first, so you can scan them in ten seconds:

• The theft happened on October 29, 2026, and Binance announced it on October 30.
• The FBI blamed North Korea’s TraderTraitor group on October 31.
• Binance says about 95% of the stolen assets are already replaced with its own money.
• Withdrawals restarted in phases on November 1, and fiat withdrawals were added on November 2.
• Fake “$150 compensation” posts are circulating, and they are scams.

The main point: nothing here asks you to move your money in a panic, but it does ask you to be careful with links and messages for the next few weeks.

What the Binance hack actually was

Attackers drained Binance’s hot wallets, the internet-connected wallets an exchange uses to process withdrawals. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the vast majority of customer assets sit in offline cold wallets, which were not the target.

Blockchain firm TRM Labs says the preparation began at least 36 hours earlier and most funds left within about 20 minutes starting at 20:05 UTC. That makes it roughly four times bigger than the $1.5 billion Bybit theft in February 2025.

The money was spread across many networks, which is why recovery is hard:

Figures come from TRM Labs and use prices at the time of the theft.

How the attackers got in (and what is still unknown)

Binance has not published a final root cause. Its first assessment, reported by Infosecurity Magazine, was that the attacker came in through a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which gave access to a service container. Binance later said its investigation found additional points of breach.

It also says it found no evidence that wallet private keys leaked. A full technical post-mortem is promised once the investigation ends, with no date given.

On attribution, TRM Labs, Elliptic and Chainalysis all point to TraderTraitor with high confidence. The FBI alert of October 31 agrees, according to Help Net Security, and lists 628 addresses it wants crypto providers to block. We covered the same state-backed crews in our look at North Korean hackers using AI.

Is your money safe after the Binance hack?

According to Binance, yes. The exchange says customer funds are safe and that it will cover the loss with its SAFU emergency fund and company money. TechCrunch reports that about 95% of the stolen assets have been replaced so far, and the rest is being bought because those tokens are harder to source at scale.

Here is where things stand on access:

• Deposits kept working throughout the incident.
• Withdrawals restarted in phases on November 1, network by network.
• Fiat withdrawals for five more currencies returned on November 2.
• Delays and partial outages are still possible while traffic is heavy.

If a withdrawal fails, wait a bit and retry rather than submitting it again and again.

One honest caveat: these are promises from the company itself. Binance says it will publish an updated proof of reserves, and that is the document worth checking before you decide how much to keep there.

Scams to watch for this week

Big breaches bring copycat fraud within hours. Posts claiming Binance will pay a $150 reward to users hit by the withdrawal pause are fake, and Binance staff have said so publicly.

A few habits cover most of the risk:

• Open the Binance app or type the address yourself instead of tapping links in emails, texts or replies.
• Never share your seed phrase, 2FA codes or login details with anyone claiming to be support.
• Treat any “claim your compensation” page as a trap. No compensation claim is needed.
• Turn on app-based or hardware-key 2FA if you still use SMS codes.

Info-stealing malware is another way accounts get emptied, and our post on the VOLTA infostealer shows how that works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did I lose money in the Binance hack?

Binance says customer balances are safe and that deposits were never affected. The stolen money came from the exchange’s hot wallets, and Binance says it is covering the gap.

Who was behind the Binance hack?

The FBI attributes it to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group, the same group it blamed for the 2025 Bybit theft. Private analysis firms reached the same conclusion with high confidence.

Are Binance withdrawals working again?

Mostly. They restarted in phases on November 1, and fiat withdrawals were added on November 2. Some networks may still be slow.

Will the stolen crypto be recovered?

Part of it may be. Binance says it froze about $3 billion with partners, while TRM Labs puts frozen funds at about $2.7 billion. Hackers of this kind usually launder the rest, so full recovery is unlikely.

Our take: keep only what you trade on an exchange

Binance handled the first days reasonably well: it paused withdrawals, froze funds and promised to cover users. Even so, a $6.3 billion theft is a reminder that any exchange is a single point of failure. Keep trading money on the exchange, move long-term holdings to a wallet you control, and wait for the proof of reserves and post-mortem before you trust the “all clear.”