BITCOIN CRASHES as Binance Confirms $6.3B BIGGEST HACK EVER

Bitcoin fell below $80,000 and touched $76,000 during the selloff, despite a cited claim that contrarian buyers had kept it above $80,000. One speaker considered a decline of just 3–4% bullish. Scott said the bear market had been relatively mild, citing fear and apathy at the previous summer’s bottom alongside continued institutional buying. He argued that rising demand confronting Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap could eventually push prices much higher.

The reported Binance hack was estimated at roughly $6.3 billion and described as potentially the largest crypto hack in history, but Scott cautioned that he had done limited due diligence and that the details were still unclear. Dan Held doubted that a single compromised developer laptop could account for a loss of that scale, suggesting a multi-step attack that might have involved zero-days, social engineering, or spycraft. AI involvement was possible but unconfirmed. Analysts including ZachXBT, Tev(an)o, and Chainalysis reportedly saw likely North Korean fingerprints, but attribution was not definitive.

Roughly $3 billion was reportedly frozen, including $1.567 billion in USDT frozen by Tether, with Circle and Arbitrum also freezing funds. Binance’s SAFU fund was said to hold 15,000 BTC worth $1.18 billion, while the company could cover a further $2.1 billion from its own funds. Its proof of reserves reportedly showed $151.5 billion held for users, with its eight largest assets backed one-to-one or more. Held said Binance, as a large, profitable exchange, could absorb a net loss of around $2 billion, though it would still be significant. The host said customer funds appeared safe; the cause of the attack and Binance’s response remained unsettled.

The speakers described attacks increasingly aimed at people and service providers rather than only at private keys. Polymarket reportedly faced a front-end injection attack that displayed an incorrect transaction, while Trezor announced probable spyware in its hardware wallets. The speakers said they had not seen identified victims and distinguished reseller-related incidents from devices purchased directly from Trezor or Ledger. They also warned that phishing can involve fake video calls and AI-generated voice impersonation, citing an attempt that nearly fooled Bitcoin figure Yago. Their advice was to verify identities using shared facts that had never been posted or messaged.

Held said custody and private-key management are an exchange’s most important functions, ahead of running a trading venue. The speakers discussed dividing Bitcoin exposure between an ETF such as iBit and spot Bitcoin in cold storage; one described keeping most holdings in cold storage and a smaller balance with a custodian. They emphasized that self-custody and multisig need careful backup, key-rotation, and device-failure planning, including storing backups separately from cold-storage devices to limit shared risks such as fire or earthquake. They said native Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions are irreversible, unlike transactions involving centralized stablecoins, which can be reversed. Google was previewing institutional custody using multi-party computation, with institutions able to set how many parties must cooperate to reassemble keys.

Strive bought 6,182 Bitcoin on Monday after launching its SATS fixed-dividend product. Strategy bought no Bitcoin and repurchased $205 million of STRC; its daily-dividend amendment passed with more than 99% shareholder approval, and the host said daily dividends on STRC and other preferred shares were likely. Coinbase’s earnings were largely supported by gains on assets it holds while crypto trading remained weak. Robinhood’s crypto revenue fell 55% year over year but rose about 20% quarter over quarter, while overall earnings increased.

DTCC’s tokenization service went live on its own network and Canton with more than 20 partners, including major banks and institutions, and it plans to add other blockchains starting next year. The host said blockchain rails could enable real-time settlement and replace T+2 and T+1, though the speakers said benefits for retail investors remain unclear. A Nasdaq-listed company, EXEC, reportedly said Nasdaq’s representative urged it to object to tokenized trading of its shares on OKX Ice, where 38 companies had opted out; speakers contrasted this with a favorable NYSE tokenization webinar involving Securitize. Kraken and Intercontinental Exchange were described as pursuing a route to bring Hyperliquid perpetuals to the United States, and HYPE rose 15% as ICE moved toward that goal.