Binance Resumes Bitcoin Withdrawals After Covering 95% of $6.3 Billion Stolen in Hack

Photo: AP (file photo) via Al Jazeera

Binance has resumed bitcoin withdrawals and says other coins will follow in phases, after the exchange covered 95 percent of the $6.3 billion stolen in the biggest crypto heist in history.

The world's biggest crypto exchange said it used company money to buy back $6 billion of the stolen tokens. The FBI has tied the attack to a North Korean state unit, though President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States is still not certain who did it. This is a follow up to our earlier report on the Binance hack in which $6.3 billion was stolen.

Main News Report

Reuters reported that Binance posted on its status page shortly after 0600 GMT on Sunday that the planned withdrawals had begun. The first phase covers 15 crypto assets, including bitcoin, ether, XRP and dogecoin.

Binance said it had covered $6 billion of the stolen crypto by using company money to buy replacement tokens. The remaining 5 percent is made up of assets that are hard to buy in large amounts and may take longer to source. The exchange said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of its own funds to cover the losses in full.

The money came from three places: the exchange's $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, known as SAFU, which it keeps to protect customers after a security breach; its Futures Insurance Fund; and its own company funds. Co CEO Yi He said on Saturday that half of the SAFU fund would be used, and that the company would top the fund back up to about $1 billion.

Background Context

The theft took place late on Thursday and most of it was over in about 20 minutes, according to blockchain firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis. Binance has been working with other firms in the industry to freeze the stolen assets, and says about $3 billion had been located by Friday.

Co CEO Richard Teng has called the breach a complex attack. He said it involved a hacked laptop and harmful software made to delete signs of its own activity, which made the attack harder to trace. News of the hack pushed crypto prices down on Friday, and markets stayed nervous over the weekend, as our report on the stock market falls at the end of October also showed.

Reactions and Statements

The FBI said on Saturday that the North Korean state sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor carried out the attack. The bureau said members of the unit were seen changing the stolen assets into ether, and that it expects more laundering steps to follow. North Korea has long denied using state cyber units for theft, and its mission in Geneva and embassy in China did not reply to requests for comment, Reuters reported.

Trump struck a different note. "We don't know if it's North Korea, but if it is, we'll talk to North Korea about it," he told reporters on Saturday. Binance, for its part, has repeated that it will bear the full cost of the hack and that customer funds are safe.

Why This News Matters

For ordinary users in Pakistan and around the world, the key point is simple: withdrawals are coming back in phases, and the exchange says no customer will lose money. Binance has 335 million registered users and held about $162.8 billion in customer assets at the end of 2025, so a failure here would have shaken the whole crypto market, in the same way big shocks move share markets, as seen in our coverage of the US economy and markets this quarter.

The case also shows the scale of crypto crime now. Researchers at TRM Labs say attackers stole $2.9 billion across nearly 150 attacks last year. This one theft, at $6.3 billion, is more than double that full year total.

Future Developments

Withdrawals for the remaining coins will open in phases as Binance sources the harder to buy tokens. Investigators in the United States will keep tracking the stolen funds as the laundering continues, and the exchange says it will rebuild its SAFU safety fund to about $1 billion. Any official US decision on whether North Korea was behind the attack will also shape what happens next.

Sources

• Reuters: Binance resumes bitcoin withdrawals after covering bulk of stolen $6.3 billion
• Reuters: FBI links North Korea to theft of $6 billion from Binance

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