$3.6B Flees Binance On Reopen, THORChain Founder Opposes Coin Freeze: Hodler’s Digest
Ecosystem
- English
- News
- Latest News
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Altcoins
- Blockchain
- Regulation
- Markets
- Features
- Magazine
- Reviews
- Research
- Opinion
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
- Commissioned Articles
- Press Releases
- Special Projects
About
- About Cointelegraph
- History of Cointelegraph
- Editorial Policy
- Ads Disclosure
- Financial Risk Disclaimer
Crypto Market Overview
- DOGE: $0.07440 (-1.88%)
- TRX: $0.3204 (+2.19%)
- LINK: $11.10 (-2.45%)
- ZEC: $1,149.31 (-8.18%)
- ADA: $0.1895 (-2.08%)
- XRP: $1.24 (-0.59%)
- ETH: $2,259.81 (-1.40%)
- BTC: $77,178.14 (-1.63%)
- XMR: $604.88 (+0.28%)
- BNB: $699.43 (-2.06%)
- XLM: $0.1619 (-4.07%)
- SOL: $92.44 (-2.70%)
- HYPE: $84.19 (-4.12%)
Article Content
Binance reopens withdrawals
Binance has reopened withdrawals for 15 blockchain networks after $6.3 billion was stolen by North Korean hackers from its hot wallets late last week. Binance said today it had processed around $4.65 billion in withdrawals and received $1 billion in deposits. Founder Changpeng Zhao noted that 98% of users chose to stay.
DeFi Llama’s Binance wallet tracker shows $5.8 billion in outflows over 24 hours, but its figures may include internal transfers. About 95% of the stolen crypto has already been replenished using Binance’s corporate reserves, insurance, and 50% of the funds in the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU).
The biggest hack in history occurred on Thursday, when North Korea’s TraderTraitor group gained access to delegated wallet permissions. Ido Ben-Natan of Blockaid told Cointelegraph that attackers could have stolen funds without EIP-7702 (account abstraction), but it may have helped them bypass safeguards.
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng rejected the idea of attributing the hack to a single compromised laptop. He emphasized that the investigation had not attributed responsibility to any individual.
Thanking the Secret Service for their swift action, Zhao highlighted their role in tracking and freezing stolen funds. Elliptic estimated that $2.84 billion of the stolen assets, mostly USDC and USDT, had been frozen on-chain, leaving hackers with $3.33 billion.
THORChain founder rejects freeze request
The North Korean hackers have used THORChain to permissionlessly swap cryptocurrencies, causing a surge in the protocol’s native token RUNE price. However, the THORChain founder has opposed the freeze request, arguing against compliance with FBI demands.