Billions of dollars worth of digital assets left wallets controlled by the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, on Thursday afternoon New York time.
Pending the success of any recovery efforts, the dollar value of missing assets tentatively rank Binance’s loss today among the largest heists in world history.
Withdrawals that founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) would eventually characterize as a hack began no later than 4:30pm, with researchers identifying smaller, prior transactions by the alleged hacker(s) throughout the day.
As illegitimate withdrawals continued, Binance began halting withdrawals sometime around 6pm, with an official pause announcement at 6:22pm.
By 8pm, Arkham Intelligence estimated the value of illegitimate withdrawals had already exceeded $5.8 billion. Loss estimates varied widely, from Binance’s $2.54 billion declaration at 7:22pm to more than double that figure according to third-party researchers.
Binance’s social media account, as well as CEO Hi Ye, swore that the giant exchange would somehow reimburse customers for any losses.
Live updates from the October 29 Binance hack
Stablecoin issuers Tether, Circle, World Liberty Financial, and Paxos quickly froze stablecoins to assist Binance.
At 7:06pm, Binance said Binance Alpha trading was suspended. CEO He said a post-mortem would follow after staff finish the investigation.
This is a developing situation, with updates arriving by the minute.
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