Binance shut its on-chain doors in both directions in the early hours of Friday, October 30, suspending all deposits and withdrawals while it investigates a suspected hack of its hot wallets. In the same statement the exchange pledged to cover every loss, writing on X: "Binance will cover all losses." Reports attributed the announcement to co-chief executive Yi He, and co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company, said the incident "does look like a hack" and that he expects users to be made whole. The freeze widened an earlier partial pause: withdrawals stopped at 22:15 UTC on Thursday, October 29, trading on the Binance Alpha platform for early-stage tokens paused at 23:06 UTC, and the full suspension followed shortly after midnight.
The one hard number so far is the frozen total: $2.54 billion.
That figure breaks down into more than $1.567 billion in USDT frozen by Tether and more than $800 million in USDC frozen by Circle, about $2.37 billion combined, with roughly $170 million frozen by other parties the exchange has not named. No reopening date has been given, no confirmed loss figure has been published, and no attacker has been identified, though a full post-mortem has been promised once the investigation closes. Markets moved before the pledge and kept sliding after it: BNB traded near $694 at about 00:14 UTC on Friday, down 8.6% over 24 hours, after an earlier reading near $702 put the drop at 7.2%. Bitcoin slipped to around $77,690, down 3.1% on the day, while Ether fell 4% to about $2,263, and total crypto market value dropped 3.3% to roughly $2.73 trillion even as 24-hour trading volume jumped close to 29% to $89.4 billion, a sign that holders were rushing to reposition rather than sitting still.
Why it matters
A deposit and withdrawal freeze at the largest crypto exchange by volume hits differently from a price dip on one token, because users cannot move funds off the platform for now even though Binance says balances are safe, and prices on other venues can drift away from Binance prices while the freeze lasts. That dislocation is one reason the pledge alone did not steady BNB: traders are pricing in both the cost of the cover promise and a disruption with no end date attached. The history here cuts both ways. Binance set up its Secure Asset Fund for Users, known as SAFU, in 2018 and drew on it after a 7,000 BTC loss in 2019, and the fund now holds about $1 billion in bitcoin. Bybit made clients whole within days of its $1.5 billion breach in February 2025, though it has since recovered only $48.4 million of the stolen funds. If this incident is confirmed at the scale now being estimated, it would pass Bybit's breach as the largest crypto theft on record, and readers tracking Binance's regulatory path can compare this with Binance files for Brazil license days before October 30 deadline and its market position in Binance's real Bitcoin volume and Brazil stablecoin rush.
The arithmetic below is MarketRadar's own, built from the published figures. Frozen tokens are not recovered tokens: getting them back runs through issuer or court processes that take weeks, and the frozen total can still rise as tracing continues.
| Measure | Figure | Cover from $2.54B frozen | Gap left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum hot-wallet outflows tracked by Blockaid and FinanceFeeds | $3.3 billion | about 77% | about $0.76 billion |
| Wider tally across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron reported by Decrypt | $5.57 billion or more | about 46% | more than $3 billion |
| Assets in wallets labelled "binance-hacker-1029" tracked by Arkham | $5.84 billion | about 43% | about $3.30 billion |
Zhao has said losses may sit slightly above $1 billion, which would leave the cover pledge well within reach of SAFU plus the frozen funds. The wider tallies tell another story: at $5.57 billion, more than $3 billion would have to come from Binance's own balance sheet, and the company has not said which source will fund the pledge. Separate reports said Binance.US, the separate US venue, was not affected.
What to watch
- A confirmed loss figure from Binance, and whether it lands near $1 billion or near the wider on-chain tallies.
- A reopening timetable for deposits and withdrawals, plus any staged restart by network.
- The post-mortem: how access was gained, which wallets were hit, and what controls change.
- Which source funds the cover pledge: SAFU, frozen assets, the corporate balance sheet, or a mix.
- Whether the frozen total climbs past $2.54 billion as issuers trace further funds.
Key points
- Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals early on October 30 and pledged to cover all losses from the suspected hack.
- Verified frozen assets total $2.54 billion, including more than $1.567 billion in USDT from Tether and more than $800 million in USDC from Circle.
- Outflow estimates range from about $3.3 billion from Ethereum hot wallets to at least $5.57 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron; none is a confirmed theft figure.
- BNB fell about 8.6% in 24 hours to near $694, Bitcoin slipped to about $77,690, and total crypto market value dropped 3.3% to $2.73 trillion.
- No reopening date, confirmed loss total or attacker attribution has been published; a full post-mortem is promised.
MarketRadar take
The pledge removes the worst user outcome, a loss left with customers, but it does not remove price risk or counterparty questions. On the low outflow estimate the math is comfortable: a $0.76 billion gap sits inside a $1 billion SAFU fund. On the high estimate the gap passes $3 billion and the pledge becomes a balance-sheet event. That is why the next official number matters more than the next headline. Until Binance names a loss figure and a reopening date, BNB and the wider market are trading on uncertainty, not on the incident itself.
