Binance restores 90% of stolen funds after $6.3bn hack as withdrawals set to reopen Sunday
Binance halted all withdrawals after a hack through a single engineer's laptop drained an estimated $6.3bn — surpassing the previous record $1.5bn Bybit breach in 2025.Kim Jong Un, whose country's TraderTraitor unit carried out the Binance raid using access gained through a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, according to investigators.
Binance says it has already restored 90% of the $6.3bn stolen in Thursday's hack, drawing on its corporate treasury, a futures insurance fund and its emergency Secure Asset Fund for Users to make customers whole. The world's largest crypto exchange pledged to absorb the full financial impact itself, with withdrawals set to reopen on Sunday 1 November. The remaining 10% consists of less liquid, lower-ranked tokens that may take longer to source.
Co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the entire heist took roughly 20 minutes and that multiple hackers used a 'self-destruct mechanism' to cover their tracks.
US blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs says it has 'high confidence' the attack was carried out by TraderTraitor, North Korea's elite state-backed hacking unit, making it the largest crypto theft ever recorded.
Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether froze $2.4bn within an hour of the attack, with the US Secret Service working 'around the clock' to trace and recover remaining funds.
