Binance Customers Drain Billions After Breach

Net withdrawals from Binance totaled $3.64 billion on Sunday, marking a sharp drain of assets as the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange reopened after a week-long suspension.

The outflow occurred between 06:00 and 15:30 GMT on November 1, when the platform processed $4.649 billion in withdrawals against $1.01 billion in deposits. Binance reported that the initial surge in withdrawals has since declined and is stabilizing.

The incident follows a cyberattack that compromised $6.3 billion in digital assets on Binance.com, the company's global centralized exchange. The firm stated that its US-facing platform remained unaffected by the breach.

Binance has reserved more than $6.34 billion in funds to address the fallout, covering approximately 95% of the stolen value through its corporate treasury and futures insurance reserves. The company pledged to fully cover the financial impact of the stolen funds, though it noted that sourcing the remaining amount may take additional time.

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials attributed the heist to TraderTraitor, a North Korean cybercrime group also known as the Lazarus Group. The FBI published a list of cryptocurrency wallet addresses linked to the group on Saturday, urging industry partners to block transactions involving those addresses. This group previously stole a then-record $1.5 billion from the exchange Bybit in 2025.

Binance indicated that the intrusion likely began with a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer, which allowed hackers to execute unauthorized transactions. The exchange has urged cryptocurrency issuers to freeze affected assets while it completes security checks before resuming more services in phases.

The $3.64 billion in withdrawals represents a fraction of the total assets held by the privately held firm, which reported more than $160 billion in custody in 2024. Withdrawals for more than two dozen major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have resumed.