Binance’s response to the largest known cryptocurrency theft is now being measured not only by how much was stolen, but by whether customers continue to trust the exchange with their funds. The company says users will not bear the losses, while withdrawals surged after the platform restored access following a suspension of about two days.
The attack took place on October 29, with criminals stealing digital assets valued at roughly $6.3 billion. The FBI later attributed the operation to TraderTraitor, a group linked to North Korea.
When Binance began reopening withdrawals on November 1, customers withdrew about $7.4 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. That figure is the total withdrawn, not the net outflow: customers also deposited around $2.7 billion during the same period. The resulting net outflow was approximately $4.7 billion, or $4.72 billion according to Reuters, equivalent to about 3% of the assets held by Binance.
The figures do not, on their own, establish a broad loss of confidence. Reuters reported that analysts believe trust has largely held, and Binance said withdrawals began to stabilise after the initial surge. The exchange’s earlier experience after FTX collapsed in 2022 provides a comparison: Binance then recorded roughly $6 billion in net outflows over 72 hours.
Binance has promised to cover the losses using company treasury resources, its SAFU emergency fund and part of an insurance fund. The company says it has replenished about 95% of the affected assets. It says the remaining 5% consists mainly of less liquid cryptocurrencies that are harder to acquire in large quantities.
The exchange has also published cryptographic proof of reserves showing at least one-to-one backing for ten assets. That does not restore the stolen funds by itself, nor does it amount to a full audit of the company.
The incident highlights the distinction between a blockchain and the businesses built around it: a network may record transactions correctly even as a platform’s security systems are compromised. The information available points to a problem in Binance’s own environment.
The attack adds to a series of different crises that have fuelled doubts about the crypto sector. FTX collapsed in 2022 amid fraud involving customer funds, while TerraUSD lost its peg that year, dragging down the LUNA token and its ecosystem. In 2025, Bybit suffered a theft of around $1.5 billion, which the FBI attributed to North Korean hackers. These cases involved different causes, including fraud, economic design failures and cyberattacks.
Binance also faced scrutiny before the latest attack. In 2023, the company pleaded guilty in the United States to violations related to anti-money-laundering controls, economic sanctions and registration requirements for certain financial services, and agreed to pay about $4.3 billion. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, also pleaded guilty to failing to meet anti-money-laundering obligations. Separately, the SEC withdrew a civil lawsuit in May 2025 against several Binance-linked entities, including its US platform; there was no ruling on the merits of the allegations.
The company has encountered regulatory obstacles in Europe as well. By the end of the transitional period under the MiCA regulation on July 1, Binance had not obtained the required authorisation and had withdrawn its application in Greece. In France, its former registration was no longer valid, and the company announced restrictions for customers in several countries. The Financial Times reported in October that regulators were examining the use of an exception allowing services to European users when they request them on their own initiative.
Binance says it will absorb the cost of the theft, and the outflows have not, so far, resulted in widespread panic. But the response remains a significant test: customers who leave assets with an intermediary need to trust both its ability to protect them and the way it handles a failure.
Sources: Xataka.