Binance Covers $6.34 Billion October Hack Entirely From Company Funds

Binance said on Thursday that it has completed coverage of the assets taken in the October 29 breach, committing more than $6.34 billion of company funds to the task, according to its official announcement. The exchange bought the affected tokens through market and over-the-counter channels, drawing on a partial deployment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), a portion of its futures insurance fund held above the level its risk-management framework requires, and its corporate treasury. Coverage here means customer balances were replaced from Binance's own books; it does not mean any stolen coins have been recovered from the attackers. The company has also committed to replenishing SAFU to roughly $1 billion after the draw, keeping the emergency user-protection reserve fully funded. A small number of tokens the exchange no longer lists were affected as well, and Binance said those holdings will be settled under its delisting process, with holders covered. The completion closes a staged repair effort that began within hours of the breach: the exchange first pledged more than $6.34 billion, reported 90% coverage, then 95%, and later put replenishment at 98% while it bought up the remaining, less liquid assets. Withdrawals began returning on November 1, starting with bitcoin and then expanding across other networks, and the restart remains on a phased timetable. The announcement does not say how much of the stolen assets have been retrieved, and it names no attacker. Binance's November 3 incident report traced the theft, the largest crypto hack on record, to a fake job interview and a poisoned developer tool that led to unauthorized withdrawals from hot wallets. Two weeks on, Thursday's statement is the first time the exchange has called the coverage complete.

A new proof-of-reserves snapshot published alongside the announcement covers 198 tokens, based on balances at 00:00 UTC on November 12, which fell at 7 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. That is a sharp expansion from the 10 tokens included in the October 31 snapshot released in the days after the breach, and from the 44 tokens in the November 4 update, when Binance put replenishment at roughly 98%. The figures are now posted on the exchange's proof-of-reserves page, which Binance describes as an updated view of assets that are fully accounted for. A proof of reserves is the process by which an exchange demonstrates that its holdings cover user balances one to one. Users cannot yet check the numbers themselves. The full zero-knowledge proof, a cryptographic method that lets each holder confirm their balance was counted without exposing anyone else's, will take about 40 to 50 hours to generate because of the computational workload. Once it is ready, holders of the affected tokens will be able to independently verify that their assets are backed at a minimum of 1:1. Until then, that 1:1 backing is the exchange's own statement rather than something customers can confirm. Binance's proof-of-reserves guidance also notes that users can check the verification date and their account record ID to confirm their account was included in the balance aggregation. The expanded token count reflects the scale of the breach, which touched assets across many networks. The exchange said it continues to reopen withdrawals in phases and will share further details as they are confirmed, while security work on its infrastructure remains underway.

The load-bearing document here is the exchange's own announcement, and its wording matters: coverage is a balance-sheet action, not a recovery claim. That distinction leaves two open tests for the coming days. First, whether the zero-knowledge proof, due in roughly two days, actually backs the 198-token snapshot at 1:1; until it lands, independent verification remains a promise rather than a check any user can run. Second, how quickly the remaining withdrawal queues clear, since the phased restart that began on November 1 is still incomplete two weeks on. The commitment to restore SAFU to about $1 billion puts the emergency reserve back at its intended size, but with no retrieval figure disclosed, the $6.34 billion stays a company-funded loss on Binance's books until the exchange says otherwise.