Suspected Binance hack pegged at $5.9B by Chainalysis, nearly four times Bybit's loss

Chainalysis's numbers convert what might have been a manageable loss into a problem for Binance's balance sheet. A shortfall near $1 billion could be covered by SAFU, whereas a figure above $3 billion would strain the exchange's finances. That distinction matters above all for BNB, since the token's price tracks Binance's stability. As long as deposit and withdrawal freezes persist, selling pressure cannot ease until Binance states the size of the loss and outlines its repayment plan. Bitcoin and ether face more risk from shifts in sentiment and trading conditions at Binance than from the stolen funds themselves.

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Earlier coverage:

• Binance suspends deposits and withdrawals, vowing to cover all losses after suspected hack

The timeline so far:

1. Tether blocks $971M USDT after suspected Binance hack, with crypto markets sliding
2. Binance seems to have been hacked, according to CZ, as Tether and Circle froze $1.79B in stablecoins
3. Binance stops withdrawals after suspected $3B+ hack; Tether and Circle freeze $2.4B

In Chainalysis's assessment, the suspected hack cost Binance $5.9 billion, making the exchange's pledge to cover all losses costly rather than comforting.

Key points:

• Per CoinDesk, Chainalysis pegs the stolen amount in the suspected Binance hack at roughly $5.912 billion.
• That is close to four times Bybit's 2025 loss of about $1.5 billion, which had been the prior record for a crypto theft.
• Binance reports $2.54 billion frozen, which would leave some $3.4 billion unrecovered based on Chainalysis's number.
• The shortfall dwarfs Binance's SAFU reserve of roughly $1 billion, so most of the difference would land on its balance sheet.
• The figure is far higher than CZ's earlier suggestion that losses after freezes may have been slightly above $1 billion.
• No loss total has been confirmed by Binance, and deposit and withdrawal suspensions are still in force.

On Friday, 30 October, CoinDesk reported that Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, had estimated the suspected Binance theft at roughly $5.912 billion. That sum is nearly four times what Bybit lost in 2025, an incident that had been the industry's largest crypto theft. As the first figure from a major analytics provider, the estimate lands at the high end of the on-chain calculations that have been in circulation since Thursday evening.

Binance's commitment to reimburse all losses looks far more serious under this number. The exchange has stated that confirmed frozen assets amount to $2.54 billion, with the bulk coming from 1.567 billion USDT frozen by Tether and more than 800 million USDC frozen by Circle. Measured against Chainalysis's estimate, about $3.4 billion remains outside those freezes, although the shortfall may shrink if additional funds are located and frozen.

That amount is far larger than Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which holds roughly $1 billion in bitcoin as an emergency reserve. Should Chainalysis's calculation prove correct, Binance's own finances would cover the largest share of the shortfall. How the exchange intends to finance that promise has not been explained. Blocked assets do not equate to recovered assets either, as obtaining their return via issuers or legal processes usually takes weeks.

Earlier signals do not line up neatly with that figure. Changpeng Zhao, Binance's co-founder, had suggested that post-freeze losses may have been slightly above $1 billion, while initial on-chain analyses had focused on roughly $3.3 billion moving out of Binance's Ethereum hot wallets. The Chainalysis number appears to line up more closely with wider estimates of about $5.6 billion that include bitcoin and Tron flows, which some analysts cautioned could not yet be attributed to the hacker. No breakdown from Chainalysis has appeared, and no loss figure has been confirmed by Binance.

Deposits and withdrawals at Binance remain switched off while security reviews are under way and law enforcement is involved; a full post-mortem has been promised. No reopening date has been set, and Binance has not explained the attacker's entry method or identified who carried out the hack.

By comparison, Bybit lost roughly $1.5 billion to hackers in February 2025, an incident that the FBI blamed on North Korea. No agency or blockchain analytics company has so far assigned responsibility for the Binance hack to any actor.

What comes next is whether Binance will accept or challenge the Chainalysis estimate, how much of the stolen money can still be frozen, and the way the exchange will cover losses that may reach billions. BNB, Binance's native token, is likely to move according to those answers, having absorbed most of the selling pressure ever since the outflows were first detected.

Earlier coverage of the incident includes Binance stopping withdrawals after the suspected hack and the exchange's pledge to cover all losses.