Binance reserves $6.34B to repay hack losses, eyes withdrawal restart
Binance has set aside over $6.34 billion to restore user balances one-for-one after its record hack and expects withdrawals to resume within about 45 hours.
EXCHANGESSECURITY & HACKSNEWS
Hana Kimura
10/30/20262 min read
Binance said on Friday, Oct. 30, that it has set aside more than $6.34 billion of company funds to restore customer balances after Thursday's security breach, and that it remains on track to reopen withdrawals in roughly 45 hours, according to updates the exchange posted on X and reported by CoinDesk and Finbold.
About $5 billion of that reserve is already held in the same tokens that were drained from the exchange's hot wallets, Binance said. The remainder is being bought on public markets and through over-the-counter desks, which the company warned could take time because some affected tokens are thinly traded and OTC settlement is not instant. Binance said balances will be restored one-for-one without using customer funds.
Withdrawals have been paused since the incident while security checks are completed. Co-CEO Yi He said earlier that the exchange expected to bring the service back within 48 hours and was tightening withdrawal and address controls, U.Today reported. Deposits, briefly suspended in the early hours of Oct. 30, were running normally again later that morning, according to Cointelegraph's live coverage.
Where SAFU fits
The Secure Asset Fund for Users, set up in 2018, holds 15,000 BTC, worth about $1.16 billion based on Arkham data cited by Finbold. That covers only a fraction of the estimated $6.3 billion impact, so the bulk of the repayment comes from Binance's own balance sheet. The exchange said both SAFU and company funds will be used and that all user assets will ultimately be verified through its Proof of Reserves.
Separately, industry partners have frozen about $3 billion of the stolen assets, including more than $2.3 billion in USDT and USDC frozen by Tether and Circle. Binance said those funds are not counted in the $6.34 billion reserve and that it is working with law enforcement to recover them. The company first traced the breach to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, then said it had found additional points of entry in what it called a complex attack. It has reported no evidence that wallet private keys were exposed.
The next milestones for users are the reopening of withdrawals, a detailed technical report Binance has promised once its investigation ends, and an updated Proof of Reserves after security upgrades.
Source: CoinDesk, Finbold, U.Today, Cointelegraph