hacking

The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that it is working with the two largest stablecoin issuers globally to attempt to recover nearly half of the stolen funds from the Binance hacking incident. In this attack, hackers stole over $6 billion in assets from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange.The U.S. Department of Justice has obtained court authorization to seize or restrict the disposal of $1.2 billion from the $2.7 billion that Tether and Circle Internet Group immediately froze following the hacking incident on October 29. Investigators are still tracking the remaining funds. The Federal Bureau of Investigation refers to the related hacking group as TraderTraitor, which is currently attempting to transfer and launder the stolen assets through cross-chain bridges, mixers, and cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to Bloomberg, the Binance hacking incident is prompting the cryptocurrency industry to re-examine its long-held decentralized philosophy, as well as the transaction review, settlement delays, and fund intervention mechanisms in the traditional financial system.As the cryptocurrency industry seeks to enter the mainstream financial market in the United States, some institutional investors are beginning to reconsider Wall Street's financial risk control mechanisms. In traditional finance, banks, payment networks, and clearing institutions can review suspicious transactions during the fund transfer process and can suspend fund flows under certain circumstances.Third Eye CEO Tian Zeng stated that he hopes the settlement time can be shortened from the traditional financial T+1 day to T+1 hour, by appropriately extending the settlement time and increasing review steps, thereby reducing hackers' ability to quickly transfer funds.FalconX Co-Head of Markets Joshua Lim pointed out that as more institutions enter the cryptocurrency market, the client structure is changing, and some institutions are no longer willing to fully accept the risks associated with irreversible transactions. As the cryptocurrency industry further integrates with traditional finance, how to balance transaction efficiency, decentralization, and fund security will become a problem that the industry must face.

According to a report by Reuters, after Binance suffered a $6.3 billion hacking attack last week, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) began contacting banks on Monday to inquire whether their systems had experienced any unusual activity or service disruptions, in order to assess the risk of security incidents in the cryptocurrency market spreading to the traditional financial system.Insiders stated that several banks are conducting security diagnostics on their internal systems and evaluating whether there are vulnerabilities that similar attack methods could exploit. The cybersecurity team of a major U.S. bank has contacted Binance and is in the process of drafting an internal report, which may lead to a review of systems and updates to cybersecurity measures.Binance stated that it is currently maintaining close contact with global regulators and promptly reporting on this security incident. The Federal Reserve and OCC declined to comment. Insiders also pointed out that the rapid evolution of AI models has increased the difficulty for banks to defend against hacking attacks, and banks are investing significant resources to review and patch cybersecurity code.

According to The Block citing the Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo-jong, the Minister of the Workers' Party of Korea, issued a second statement regarding the Binance hacking incident, stating that North Korea is willing to engage in dialogue, but this may not necessarily align with national interests.Kim Yo-jong is the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. She previously criticized the United States for blaming North Korea for the $6.3 billion Binance vulnerability incident.

ARK Invest's Head of Digital Assets Research, Lorenzo Valente, stated that cryptocurrency hacks effectively constitute a hidden transaction tax and cost of value storage, similar to product theft in the retail industry, with related losses ultimately passed on to users through cost pricing. Each hack undermines the competitiveness of the crypto network.Data shows that since 2018, the average market value lost annually in the crypto industry due to hacks accounts for 24 basis points (0.24%) of the total market value, while the losses from fraud in the U.S. banking system amount to only 1.7 basis points (0.017%), a difference of about 14 times.

According to on-chain analysis platform Lookonchain, the Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin has been hacked, resulting in a loss of over 46 million dollars, with more than 9 million dollars of stolen assets already frozen.The hackers currently hold a total of approximately 9.2 million dollars worth of altcoins, which may face selling pressure. This includes 37.29 billion PEPE, valued at about 1.79 million dollars; 12,820 AAVE, valued at about 161 thousand dollars; 769,950 PENDLE, valued at about 135 thousand dollars; and 29,830 EVA, valued at about 126 thousand dollars.Additionally, it includes 1.98 million VIRTUAL, valued at about 115 thousand dollars; 147,840 UNI, valued at about 104 thousand dollars; and 2.67 million ONDO, valued at about 103 thousand dollars.

Matthew Sigel, the Head of Digital Asset Research at VanEck, stated that Citigroup Wealth released a report titled "Expanding the Investable Universe: A Guide to Crypto ETFs," recommending spot BTC and ETH ETFs to suitable clients as a way to allocate digital assets through regulated brokerage accounts beyond stocks and bonds. Additionally, on August 18, Citigroup announced that its new Custody+ platform will begin holding Bitcoin for institutional clients this year.Sigel noted that this will make Citigroup the 6th bank among the 29 global systemically important banks to have launched or announced institutional Bitcoin custody, following BNY, Standard Chartered, Société Générale, State Street, and Deutsche Bank. BNY, Standard Chartered, and SG-Forge have been licensed and are serving institutions, while Deutsche Bank stated it will launch within weeks, and JPMorgan has indicated it will not provide custody at this time. Sigel mentioned that last week's Binance hacking incident may be one reason for Citigroup not announcing the timeline, as he heard the service was originally set to launch last week.

According to Caixin, the Binance hacking incident may present opportunities for decentralized exchanges (DEX). Each time a major centralized exchange (CEX) experiences a sudden significant security incident or trust crisis, DEX and the entire DeFi sector tend to see a notable influx of capital and development opportunities, and this time is no exception.The advantage of DEX is that its security is guaranteed by computers and cryptography, preventing situations where malware is implanted or systems are breached due to social engineering attacks. The hard rules on-chain for DEX are strictly enforced, such as time locks and automatic circuit breakers. Even if hackers obtain the keys, they must still adhere to the rules set by the contracts.This security incident also once again sounds the alarm for "Not your keys, not your coins." A large number of users, due to concerns about the security of centralized custody, will withdraw their assets to personal cold wallets or on-chain non-custodial wallets. Once the assets flow back on-chain, the trading, liquidity mining, and wealth management demands of this portion of idle funds will be directly taken over by leading DEXs like Uniswap and Jupiter, driving a surge in DEX trading volume and total value locked (TVL) in the short term.

According to Chainalysis data, as of October 29, 2026, losses from suspected North Korean-related hacking attacks accounted for nearly 89% of the reported cryptocurrency hacking losses this year, compared to 15% in 2021.In terms of losses from individual attacks, the average loss from suspected North Korean-related attacks has increased from $50.65 million in 2021 to $185.65 million in 2026, approximately 3.7 times that of 2021.From 2021 to October 29, 2026, the reported cryptocurrency hacking losses have totaled $22.34 billion, of which losses from suspected North Korean-related attacks amounted to $13.24 billion, accounting for about 59% of the total.

Binance Co-CEO He Yi released a video on the X platform stating that the assets affected by the hacking incident amount to 6.3 billion dollars. With the joint assistance of all industry practitioners, 3 billion dollars have been frozen, and it is expected that withdrawals will be reopened in the next 42 hours. The previous suspension of withdrawals was to ensure that the entire environment was free of contamination.In addition to reconstructing the security environment, a detailed technical security audit report will be produced in the future, and there will be no abandonment of tracking the hackers; the investigation will go to the end.

According to CoinDesk, analysts from three Wall Street firms—Cantor Fitzgerald, TD Cowen, and Compass Point—believe that despite Binance experiencing a hack of approximately $6.3 billion, there are currently no sufficient signs indicating that this event will threaten the entire cryptocurrency market, and the previous trend of market recovery is unlikely to be interrupted.Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Ramsey El-Assal pointed out that Tether has frozen over $1.5 billion in stolen assets, Circle has frozen about $800 million, Ripple has frozen about $200 million, and Binance claims that the total amount of frozen stolen funds is approximately $3 billion. He believes that the cryptocurrency industry is gradually enhancing its ability to respond to such security incidents and expects that after market panic subsides, cryptocurrency-related stocks like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Strategy are likely to rebound, advising investors to buy on dips.TD Cowen analyst Lance Vitanza believes that this attack exposes security weaknesses in Binance's own transaction signature infrastructure, rather than issues with the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The market sell-off may provide an opportunity to increase holdings in Bitcoin and stocks of publicly traded companies that hold Bitcoin.Compass Point analysts believe that Binance has sufficient liquidity to cover the funding gap, expecting that its excess USDT reserves, BTC reserves, and USDC funds are enough to cover the losses. However, the firm also warns that Binance's compensation to customers may put pressure on the supply of stablecoins and could drive users to shift from centralized exchanges to competing platforms such as Coinbase, Bullish, and Hyperliquid.

Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi stated that after Binance experienced a hacker attack exceeding $6 billion, the market reaction was completely different from the FTX collapse back in the day.Although the scale of funds involved in this incident is only about 25% lower than the funding gap left by FTX, the overall decline in Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market was only a few percentage points, and market sentiment remained relatively calm, with bottom-fishing funds gradually entering the market; even with macro market pressures, capital outflows were relatively mild, and the directly affected tokens also showed some resilience.Haseeb believes that the market has strong confidence in Binance as a company, and with various industry parties quickly collaborating and providing mutual support, there is a general expectation that Binance will be able to repurchase related assets and make up for the losses. He stated that this incident reflects the maturity and progress of the cryptocurrency industry.

According to Cointelegraph, Standard Chartered's Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick stated that the Binance hacking incident may accelerate the shift towards decentralized exchanges (DEX) and benefit Uniswap's UNI. Kendrick also mentioned that his previous target of UNI reaching 100 dollars by 2030 may be too low.

Elon Musk retweeted reports related to the Binance hacking incident and commented, "Everyday is Zeroday." A zero-day vulnerability is a technical term in the field of cybersecurity, referring to a security flaw in software, systems, or hardware for which developers or vendors have not yet provided a fix, and attackers may exploit this vulnerability to launch attacks.It is called zero-day because when the vulnerability is discovered or known, there is no time for the vendor to fix it in advance (0 days).

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, the hacker-associated address of the Web3 social platform UXLINK opened a long position of 30,282.4 ETH on the decentralized perpetual contract platform Hyperliquid, with unrealized profits reaching 7.422 million USD earlier this morning.The monitoring indicates that the Binance hacking incident has put pressure on ETH, causing the unrealized profits of this long position to narrow to 2.45 million USD, with nearly 5 million USD in potential profits being given back.

The cryptocurrency trader Bonk Guy (X account Unipcs) stated that the recent hacking incident at Binance is unlikely to trigger systemic risk. He mentioned that Binance reportedly has an annual revenue of about 16 to 17 billion dollars, and nearly half of the funds involved in this incident have been frozen or may be recoverable. The amount that may ultimately be unrecoverable is about 3.2 billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 2 to 2.5 months of Binance's revenue, still within a manageable range for its operational scale.Bonk Guy pointed out that Changpeng Zhao and He Yi have publicly stated that user funds are safe, and all losses will be fully covered. He believes that the likelihood of systemic risk and a bank run occurring is extremely low. What the market needs to be more vigilant about is panic selling and media exaggeration, and he reminded investors not to make trading decisions based on panic emotions.

According to Cointelegraph, World Liberty Financial has frozen 27 million USD1 and 2 million WLFI related to the Binance hacking incident, and is working with BitGo to secure the stolen funds.

Bithumb stated that its internal mobile collaboration system DaouOffice was accessed without authorization by external parties, resulting in the theft of some personal information of customers and employees. This incident involves 6,444 customers, of which the data of 5,600 people is in an encrypted state and cannot be read, while 844 customers have confirmed that their personal information has been leaked. Additionally, the information of 715 employees and partners has also been affected.