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Binance says it has covered 90% of $6.3 billion hack

Binance says it has covered 90% of a $6.3 billion crypto loss, with customer balances in 10 major tokens fully backed and withdrawals targeted to resume Sunday.

The Crypto Front Page Desk3 min read

Binance says it has covered 90% of $6.3 billion hack

Binance says it has replaced enough assets to cover 90% of the losses from its estimated $6.3 billion security incident, a step meant to keep customer balances backed while the exchange works to restore withdrawals. In its October 31 recovery update, Binance said balances in 10 tokens, including bitcoin, ether, USDT, BNB and USDC, were fully backed. It said the remaining 10% consists of less liquid tokens that may take longer to acquire.

What does Binance mean by covering 90% of the loss?

Binance is adding replacement assets to cover the shortfall left by the stolen funds. The exchange said it will bear the financial impact rather than pass it to users. That is a statement about backing customer balances: it does not mean Binance has recovered 90% of the assets taken in the incident.

The exchange says it set aside more than $6.34 billion to cover the loss. Its recovery update names three sources for replenishment: company funds, a portion of its Futures insurance fund, and a partial deployment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users, or SAFU. Binance said it would continue buying the remaining tokens through market and over-the-counter channels.

Think of it as replacing stock on a shelf after it has gone missing: the replacement restores what the shelf is supposed to hold, even if the missing items have not been returned. Binance has separately said it worked with blockchain partners to freeze about $3 billion of affected assets.

Which customer balances does Binance say are backed?

Binance says BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and ZEC are now fully backed. The outstanding portion involves tokens outside that group, which Binance described as less liquid and potentially slower to source in the required amounts.

The exchange also published a proof-of-reserves snapshot taken at midnight UTC on October 31. Binance says users will be able to independently verify the full cryptographic proof after it is generated, with completion estimated by November 3. Proof of reserves is intended to show that reported assets cover user balances; the snapshot is a separate step from purchasing the remaining replacement tokens.

What happens next for Binance customers?

Binance said it remained on track to resume withdrawals on Sunday, November 1, but its update did not confirm that withdrawals had reopened. The exchange first reported that its initial investigation pointed to a potentially compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which may have given an attacker access to a service container and allowed unauthorized withdrawal transactions. Binance said it found no evidence that wallet private keys had leaked, and that its investigation was continuing.

CoinDesk’s report on the recovery also noted Binance’s plan to restore SAFU to about $1 billion. The immediate changes are that Binance says 90% of the loss is covered and the named tokens are fully backed. The next milestones are the withdrawal restart, the remaining token purchases and the full reserves proof.

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