Binance suspends withdrawals after billions exit wallets in hack

On Thursday afternoon New York time, digital assets worth billions of dollars moved out of wallets under the control of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Depending on whether recovery efforts succeed, the value of the missing assets would tentatively put the exchange’s loss among the largest heists in world history.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance’s founder, would later call the withdrawals a hack; they began by 4:30pm at the latest, and researchers spotted smaller prior transactions by the alleged hacker(s) earlier in the day.

While unauthorised withdrawals kept coming, Binance started pausing withdrawals at roughly 6pm, making an official halt announcement at 6:22pm.

By 8pm, Arkham Intelligence estimated that unauthorised withdrawals had already topped $5.8 billion. Estimates diverged widely: Binance put the loss at $2.54 billion at 7:22pm, while outside researchers said it could be more than twice that.

Binance’s social media account and CEO Hi Ye both promised that the exchange would, in one way or another, reimburse customers for any losses.

October 29 Binance hack: what we know so far

Tether, Circle, World Liberty Financial and Paxos, issuers of stablecoins, quickly froze their stablecoins in support of Binance.

At 7:06pm, Binance reported that Binance Alpha trading had been suspended. CEO He said a post-mortem would come after staff finish the investigation.

The situation remains in flux, with fresh information emerging by the minute.