Binance has spent about half the bitcoin in the emergency fund it keeps for users, and it has not given a date for putting the money back. CoinDesk said the address the exchange publishes for its Secure Asset Fund for Users, 1BAuq7Vho2CEkVkUxbfU26LhwQjbCmWQkD, held just above 7,500 BTC on Tuesday after four transactions on 31 October, citing mempool.space. The wallet held 15,000 BTC in February, when Binance finished converting a fund of roughly $1 billion from stablecoins into bitcoin. At about $77,000 a coin, CoinDesk put the remainder near $580 million.
The written top-up rule covers a price drop, and this was a spend
Binance's SAFU FAQ says the exchange rebalances the fund back to $1 billion if its value falls below $800 million because of bitcoin's price. CoinDesk noted that wording does not cover the fund being spent. On 31 October the exchange said it would use part of SAFU, with corporate reserves and a portion of its futures insurance fund, inside the $6.34 billion it set aside to cover the hack. It pledged to restore the fund to about $1 billion and gave no timeline. It has not said how much of the insurance fund was used. CoinDesk said it had asked Binance for comment. The original loss estimate and the promise to cover customers are in the 30 October hack story. Customer withdrawals of $3.64 billion are in Monday's outflow note.
Mercado Bitcoin says it will cover a separate Monday hack
A second exchange incident is still being counted. CoinDesk reported on Tuesday that Brazil's Mercado Bitcoin will cover losses it put around $38 million to $40 million from Monday's hack across at least 10 blockchains, and that about $11 million had been frozen with help from Tether, Circle and Chainalysis. The exchange said no customer data leaked and that it suspended platform access as a precaution. The Block earlier cited Arkham data around $46.3 million and said Tether froze more than 4.5 million USDT. The FBI's attribution of the larger Binance theft is in the regulation note. Bitcoin's election-day price is on the markets desk.