The Daily Wolf | Binance's $6.3 billion hack is four times the size of the old record.

Binance’s reported $6.3 billion hack is roughly four times the previous record, the Bybit hack. Binance first said an engineer’s compromised laptop enabled access to withdrawal services, not private keys, but later described the attack as more complex and involving multiple points. Reported losses from Binance-labeled wallets included $3.53 billion in Ethereum, $1.45 billion in Bitcoin, $628 million in Tron, and $38 million across Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.

About $3 billion had been frozen, leaving roughly $3.3 billion outstanding, according to Scott Melker. He said Tether froze $1.567 billion in USDT, Circle froze $800 million, and Arbitrum froze $74.6 million and 8,425 ETH. Binance said it would cover customer losses with its SAFU fund, which holds 15,000 Bitcoin valued by Melker at $1.18 billion, and its own funds for the remaining $2.1 billion. Binance’s October 1 proof of reserves reported $151.5 billion held for users across its eight largest assets, backed one-for-one or more; Melker calculated the hack at 4.2% of that total.

Binance assured customers their funds would be covered, and Melker expected withdrawals to resume within 45 to 48 hours, though their effect remained uncertain; deposits were still working. He said the exploit did not appear to be AI-induced and suggested social engineering or another attack vector, while allowing that AI might have helped obscure the stolen funds afterward. Chainalysis investigators described thousands of transactions in a short period, with funds repeatedly moved among addresses, which they said suggested automated efforts to hide the trail. TRM Labs, Arkham, and others attributed the attack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group, but Binance had not made that attribution.

Melker called custody a crisis for crypto, while arguing Binance’s resources and assurances about customer funds might limit capital flight. Bitcoin was down about 4–5% amid the hack and a major technology-stock sell-off. Alphabet fell 12.6% on Thursday, its worst day ever, and reported quarterly free cash flow of negative $9.07 billion; Amazon was down 6.5% pre-market and Intel fell 25%.

A coming contest over how, where, and by whom financial assets are tokenized was another major theme. Nasdaq was pushing back, while NYSE parent ICE was connected to OKX and wanted users to opt into tokenization. STRC and MSTR were described as major tokenized stock offerings unavailable to Americans. STRC’s dividend is rebased to buy back more STRC rather than paid in cash. Strategy said it would do everything it could to issue securities on-chain, but Michael Saylor said that depended on regulators and the exchange where its securities are listed; MSTR and STRC are listed on Nasdaq.

Coinbase reported $718.7 million in net income, including $715 million in gains on crypto investments, leaving about $3 million after those gains. Polymarket halted international trading after hackers accessed accounts through transaction signing. Trezor issued an urgent alert over suspected hardware tampering, with spyware reportedly placed in wallets by a third party.