The 7,500 bitcoin that left Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users on 31 October moved again on 3 November, while the fund itself still held about half its February stack. Unchained, reading public blockchain data, said the fund still held just over 7,500 BTC at 20:53 UTC on 3 November. At a mempool.space price of $77,798, that remainder was about $583 million. It is half the 15,000 BTC the fund held after Binance converted it to bitcoin in February. The drawdown itself is in Tuesday's SAFU note. This is where the coins that left went next.
One transfer, then 150 slices of about 50 bitcoin
At 05:56 UTC on 3 November, an intermediate address sent all 7,500 BTC in one transaction to an unlabeled address with more than 2,400 transactions in its history. At 06:46 UTC that address split the coins into 150 outputs of about 50 BTC each. Ninety-six of those outputs, 4,800 BTC, were among the inputs to a 9,346 BTC transfer at 14:53 UTC. The other 54 outputs went into separate transactions the same day. Unchained traced the coins to the SAFU address Binance publishes, 1BAuq7Vho2CEkVkUxbfU26LhwQjbCmWQkD. On 31 October that address sent 1 BTC at 14:45 UTC and 7,499 BTC at 14:51 UTC. It took in 15,000 BTC across five deposits from 2 to 12 February, and only dust after the 31 October transfers.
The refill pledge still has no date
Binance's FAQ says it will rebalance the fund to $1 billion if the value falls below $800 million because of the bitcoin price. At $77,798, $800 million is about 10,283 BTC. That rule applies when the bitcoin price pulls the fund under $800 million. Coins the exchange has already spent sit under a separate replenishment pledge. On 31 October Binance said it was committing to replenish SAFU to about $1 billion. It gave no date. Unchained noted that Binance's 3 November incident report, which traced the hack to a tainted developer install, does not mention SAFU. Binance also said that by 03:00 UTC on 3 November hourly deposits were exceeding withdrawals, and that a second phase of withdrawals would start at 04:00 UTC. DefiLlama data pulled by Unchained at 20:45 UTC showed about $3.22 billion of net inflows over 24 hours, against about $12.17 billion of net outflows over seven days. The earlier customer pull is in Monday's outflow note. The FBI's attribution of the $6.3 billion hack is in the regulation story. Bitcoin near $78,300 is in today's market note. Follow the exchange on the business desk.