Nearly $1 billion in derivatives positions were liquidated over 24 hours as Bitcoin slid below $78,000 on Oct. 29, after a suspected attack drained crypto worth as much as $5.9 billion from Binance hot wallets.
The transfers began around 20:24 UTC on Oct. 29, when a first Ethereum transaction sent 167,464 ETH plus 63 token transfers, including 1.615 billion USDT, to a brand-new address. Further outflows appeared on Bitcoin and Tron. Estimates of the total vary widely: an early on-chain count put it near $2.8 billion, while blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated $5.912 billion as of Oct. 30, which would make it nearly four times the roughly $1.5 billion Bybit heist of February 2025, the previous record.
The market reaction came fast. Bitcoin fell below $79,000 on Oct. 29 and traded near $78,058 on Oct. 30, down 4%, while BNB dropped about 7% to roughly $699 and Monero rose about 6% to $637. Liquidations over 24 hours reached nearly $1 billion, with Bitcoin accounting for $289 million and Ethereum $236 million. For leveraged traders, the slide below $78,000 triggered the largest forced-deleveraging event of the day.
Binance has not confirmed a hack or a final loss figure. The exchange said it was aware of a potential security issue, suspended all deposits and withdrawals and halted Binance Alpha trading while it runs security checks, and said user funds are safe. Co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote on X that “it does look like a hack on Binance” and, as a shareholder, expects users to be made whole.
In a company statement, Binance said it would make users whole and pledged to absorb the damage. “We are working non-stop to resolve this issue. Binance will cover all losses.” The exchange said it will share a full post-mortem once its investigation is complete.
Issuers freeze billions
Circle froze more than 800 million USDC in coordination with law enforcement, and Tether froze more than $1.567 billion in USDT. World Liberty Financial froze $27 million in USD1 and $2 million in WLFI, and Ripple said it is actively freezing affected RLUSD. The Arbitrum Security Council froze $30.5 million in ARB and ETH. On Oct. 30, Binance put its own verified frozen total at around $3 billion.
Security researchers see a signing-infrastructure compromise rather than a stolen key. An address funded through Tornado Cash, a mixer that obscures the origin of funds, submitted an EIP-7702 delegation for a Binance hot wallet roughly three minutes before the drain, a feature that lets an ordinary wallet run smart-contract code that can authorize later transfers without another signature.
Binance said withdrawals will resume once the issue is fully resolved, and that it will keep publishing verified figures as its teams work with law enforcement and issuers to trace and freeze more assets.
Image: house editorial illustration.
