Suspected Binance hack: about $3 billion drained from the exchange’s hot wallets
On Thursday evening, crypto worth about $3 billion according to on-chain data left the hot wallets of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, within 40 minutes. Founder Changpeng Zhao said it looks like a hack. Binance has not confirmed a breach — it says it is investigating and that user funds are safe.
⚡ Key numbers:
- about $3 billion — outflow from Binance hot wallets according to Etherscan data (estimates range from about $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion)
- 20:24–21:04 UTC, 29 October — the window in which the wallets were drained
- about $1.8 billion — stablecoins frozen by Tether (about 971 million USDT) and Circle (about 823 million USDC)
- about 195,000 ETH (about $445 million) — ether moved on, which cannot be frozen
What happened
According to the Etherscan block explorer, at 20:24 UTC the wallet labelled “Binance 14” sent about 167,500 ETH, about 1.6 billion USDT and more than 60 other tokens to a newly created address in a single transaction. Shortly afterwards, another 28,000 ETH left the “Binance 16” wallet, and at 20:41 UTC 780 million USDC left “Hot Wallet 34”. The last, smaller transfers were recorded at 21:04 UTC.
Etherscan has labelled the receiving addresses “Binance Hot Wallet Exploiter”. Estimates of the total vary: on-chain trackers put it at between about $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion, and some sources at more than $5 billion. The exchange has confirmed none of these figures.
Why analysts call it an attack
The transfers were not sent by the exchange wallet itself but triggered by a separate address that received its first funds through the Tornado Cash mixer — not how exchanges pay their transaction fees. The same address deployed the contract that executed the withdrawals more than four hours earlier, and the “Binance 14” wallet was linked to it through EIP-7702, a mechanism that lets a regular wallet act like a smart contract.
As FinanceFeeds points out, setting up such a link requires a valid signature from the wallet’s private key. How the attacker obtained it is unknown — Binance has not given a cause.
What Binance says
Binance said on X that its teams are urgently investigating reports of a potential security issue and that user funds are completely safe. The exchange said updates would come only through official channels and warned of scammers impersonating it. In the first hours after the incident, it did not confirm a hack, name a cause or announce a withdrawal suspension.
Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, wrote at 21:15 UTC that “it does look like a hack on Binance”. He thanked Tether and Circle for freezing funds and said that, as a shareholder, he expects any user losses to be fully covered. Binance keeps an emergency fund, SAFU, for such cases — it used it to cover the 7,000 BTC stolen in its 2019 breach.
Frozen stablecoins and market reaction
Stablecoin issuers blocked addresses linked to the transfers: Tether froze about 971 million USDT and Circle about 823 million USDC — about $1.8 billion in total. Ether cannot be blocked this way: about 195,000 ETH, worth about $445 million, was moved to another new address within minutes.
Markets fell. About $629 million in leveraged positions, mostly longs, were liquidated within an hour. BNB, the token tied to the exchange, lost between 5% and 9% according to different sources, bitcoin slipped to around $79,000 and ether to about $2,300.
If Binance confirms a theft of this size, it will be the largest crypto exchange hack on record — larger than the roughly $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025.
What to watch next
- Official confirmation or denial of the hack by Binance, and its cause
- Whether withdrawals work normally and whether Binance draws on its SAFU fund
- Further movements from the attacker’s addresses and any new freezes
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Frequently asked questions
Are Binance user funds safe?
Binance says they are, and Changpeng Zhao has said any losses will be fully covered. The exchange has not yet confirmed a hack or its cause. Check updates only through official Binance channels and ignore messages from people impersonating the exchange.
How much was drained from Binance?
About $3 billion from the exchange’s hot wallets, according to on-chain data; estimates range from about $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion. Tether and Circle froze about $1.8 billion in stablecoins.
What is an exchange hot wallet?
An internet-connected wallet the exchange uses for day-to-day withdrawals. It usually holds only part of the reserves; most funds sit in offline cold wallets.
Sources: Etherscan, Binance (X), FinanceFeeds, Cyber Kendra, Crypto Briefing, CryptoTicker.
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Data as of Oct 29, 2026, 23:38 may vary by source. Trading leveraged CFDs carries a high risk of losing money.
This article contains AI-generated content.
