Binance Hack: Withdrawals Are Back. Is Your Money Safe Now?

The Binance hack is the biggest crypto theft on record. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, puts the damage at about $6.3B, roughly 4.2 times the size of the previous record. It paused withdrawals on Oct 29, leaving millions of people able to see their coins but not take them out. Within a day, though, nearly half of the money had been frozen, and Binance says it will cover every loss.

Update, Nov 1: Withdrawals are back for the biggest coins. Binance reopened them in stages on Nov 1, starting with bitcoin, across 15 networks, and says it has now covered about 95% of the money taken. The FBI has also named North Korea as the attacker.

A laptop, then billions

Binance’s early findings point to a single engineer’s work laptop. The attacker used it to reach the system that sends out withdrawals, and drained money from there. The money came out of Binance’s own wallets, and Binance says user funds are safe. It has found no sign that the secret keys to those wallets were leaked, and the investigation is still going on.

On Oct 31, the FBI said North Korea was behind it, naming TraderTraitor, the same group blamed for the Bybit hack in 2025. It said the hackers were turning the stolen coins into ether and asked exchanges to block 628 addresses they had used. Binance’s co-CEO, Richard Teng, has since said the attack was more complex than one engineer’s access being misused.

You didn’t need a Binance account to feel it. Bitcoin dropped about 4.8% to below $77,000 on the news, and Binance’s own coin, BNB, fell about 8%, CoinDesk reported.

I kept some ZEC, a smaller coin, on Binance because Korean exchanges don’t list it. When I opened the app after the hack, my balance was there, but the withdraw button was greyed out. Deposits still went through. Money could come in; it just couldn’t go out.

How nearly half got frozen in a day

Binance says it has tracked down and frozen about $3B with help from partners. The other $3.3B hasn’t been traced yet.

Most of the frozen money, about $2.3B, was in stablecoins. These are coins meant to be worth exactly one US dollar, and the company that issues them can freeze them at any time. Tether, which issues USDT, and Circle, which issues USDC, both froze coins tied to the hack. Circle alone said it froze more than $800M. Bitcoin works differently. No company stands behind it, so once it’s stolen, nobody can stop it.

There’s an irony here. Crypto was built so that no company could control your money. This time, it was companies with that kind of control that saved about half of it.

Will Binance users get their money back?

So far, Binance is doing what it promised. It says it has covered about 95% of the money taken.

It used its user protection fund, called SAFU, and its own money, and it is buying the rest, mostly smaller coins outside the top ten. That means it has put back the coins users hold. It hasn’t got the stolen money back from the hackers.

The track record mostly backs that up, with one big condition. Exchanges that could afford the loss and promised in public to pay it back usually did. The ones that couldn’t afford it went under.

Can Binance afford it? SAFU holds only about $1B, by CoinDesk’s estimate, so most of the bill falls on Binance itself. But the exchange held about $144B in assets before the hack, according to DefiLlama data cited by CoinDesk. The loss comes to roughly 4% of that.

Frozen money also isn’t the same as money returned. Tether and Circle run their own checks before they release frozen coins, and the police or a court is often involved. Until that happens, Binance can’t touch the money.

Before withdrawals reopened, I wrote here that Binance would pay and that the real problem was timing and order. That held up: it reopened one batch at a time, not all at once. Where I was too cautious was how much Binance would cover with its own money. I had counted on frozen coins for about half. Instead, the company put in far more itself. The people still waiting now are holders of smaller coins, which come last.

There’s still a case for caution. The 95% figure comes from Binance itself, and the full check of its reserves isn’t done yet. Less than half of the stolen money has been found, and with North Korea, money tends to be laundered fast, as after the Bybit hack, so getting it back is unlikely. What users are protected by is Binance’s own cash.

When can you withdraw from Binance again?

Withdrawals started reopening on Nov 1, for the biggest coins first.

Bitcoin led, along with ether, USDT, USDC, BNB, XRP and coins on other big networks. Other coins come back only after each network passes more security checks, and Binance hasn’t given dates for them. A fuller proof that it holds all users’ coins is due on Nov 3.

ZEC was in the first batch, and I took mine out on the same day, but not right away. The first hours are when everyone rushes and fake links spread fastest, so I waited until evening and then moved it in two steps.

The test amount, about 5 percent, sat as “processing” for about twenty minutes. The rest landed within half an hour, and I left only a little on Binance. A few days of a greyed-out button showed me what the convenience of an exchange really costs. If you have coins that don’t need to be there, do the same, and open the app yourself rather than a link in a message.

Fake refund messages are the next risk

After past hacks, scammers sent messages dressed up as the exchange, offering a “compensation form” or asking people to “verify” their account. I still haven’t received any for this hack, but I expect them. Anyone who clicks can lose money a second time. Binance has long said it will never ask you to tap a link in a text message to secure your account.

My own habits come from earlier hacks. I keep only what I need for trading on exchanges, plus a little I could live without if a hack locked it up. Some long-term bitcoin sits on a hardware wallet, a small device that keeps your keys offline. I moved only part of my bitcoin there, because the wallet can be restored only with a list of recovery words, and losing those scares me more than a hack.

Before anything else, check two settings in your exchange account:

With both turned on, a fake link can do far less damage.

Sources

• CoinDesk, Binance opens crypto withdrawals in phases, starting with bitcoin (November 1, 2026)
• crypto.news, Binance reopens bitcoin withdrawals and says 95% restored (November 1, 2026)
• BleepingComputer, FBI links $6.3 billion Binance crypto heist to North Korean hackers (November 1, 2026)
• CNBC, Binance resumes withdrawals and says most stolen user assets are covered (October 31, 2026)
• CBS News, Binance resumes withdrawals for some major cryptocurrencies (November 1, 2026)