Binance customers pulled $3.64 billion, or 2.1% of the exchange's assets, after the platform came back online from a $6.3 billion theft that the FBI has linked to North Korea. RTE said the exchange told clients that withdrawals were stabilizing after an early spike and that deposit volumes stayed substantial. Binance said on Sunday it had $171 billion in assets under management as of 28 October. It counts 335 million registered users.
The exchange replaced about $6 billion and left 5% still to source
Binance said it had covered 95% of the stolen assets and had used its own money to buy about $6 billion of replacement tokens. The remaining 5% are less liquid tokens and may take longer to source. Withdrawals are rolling out in stages, with the first phase covering 15 tokens, including bitcoin, ether, some USDC and USDT, and dogecoin. Sunday's restart is in yesterday's business note. The FBI statement is in the regulation story.
DefiLlama's tally is higher, and Binance disputes the dashboard
DefiLlama's dashboard showed outflows of $5.81 billion, up from $4.36 billion on an earlier reading. Binance did not immediately comment on the updated figure. A spokesperson told RTE that an earlier DefiLlama number left out coins the exchange had moved into a new hot wallet, and that the company's last post on X was closer to the net figure. Net outflows, Binance said, are what clients withdrew minus what they deposited after the breach.
The combined value of USDT and USDC has fallen about $1.2 billion since Friday, using CoinMarketCap data cited by RTE. Stablecoin caps often shrink when money is leaving crypto. Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, said spot bitcoin ETFs lost $643 million on Friday and more than $1.3 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated. He called an exchange hack bank robbery at the speed of the internet, and a harder risk for people who look after other people's capital. TRM Labs counted $2.9 billion stolen across nearly 150 incidents last year. Jay Koh of the Asia Web3 AI Association said he had not moved his own coins, most of which sit in a cold wallet, and that users should keep less on any one platform than they need to trade. President Donald Trump told reporters, in comments a White House account posted on X, that the United States does not yet know if North Korea was involved, and that Washington would talk to Pyongyang if it was. Bitcoin was back above $78,000 and ether near $2,287 in RTE's Monday reading. The price detail is on the markets desk.