On Monday, the publicly visible emergency Bitcoin wallet belonging to Binance contained roughly half of its prior balance after the trading platform utilized its customer protection reserve to address deficits stemming from Thursday’s $6.3 billion security breach.
The cryptocurrency exchange confirmed on Saturday that 7,499 Bitcoin (BTC) had been moved, associating this transaction with the partial utilization of the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU).
As of Monday, the designated address held close to 7,500 BTC, valued at $583 million, representing a drop from the approximately 15,000 BTC present prior to the transaction.
The breach, representing the largest theft in digital asset history, compelled Binance to halt withdrawals while efforts were made to substitute the compromised funds. The FBI pointed to North Korea on Saturday for the incident, pinpointing the malicious actors as TraderTraitor.
Gradual restoration of withdrawals began on Sunday, with the exchange reporting that it had restored roughly 95% of the impacted user funds, marking an increase from 90% recorded a day earlier. Acquisition of the remaining, less liquid digital assets proceeded via open market operations and over-the-counter trades.
To absorb the losses, the platform is drawing upon its organizational treasury, the SAFU pool, and a portion of its futures risk insurance reserve.
SAFU guidelines establish no deadline for restoring funds utilized following security breaches
The documentation for Binance’s SAFU policy details routine tracking and rebalancing procedures regarding the asset pool’s market valuation.
“Should the market value of the pool drop beneath $800 million USD as a result of BTC price movements, Binance will execute a rebalancing operation to bring the total value back to $1 billion,” according to the document.
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The established guidelines omit any specific timeframe for replacing assets withdrawn in the aftermath of a security event.
Inquiries sent by Cointelegraph to Binance regarding the remaining SAFU reserves, potential subsequent deployments, and replenishment schedules did not receive an immediate response.
Binance publishes validation data for post-breach reserves
On Monday, Binance stated that users could now cross-reference their account totals against the proof-of-reserves snapshot taken on Saturday, following the finalization of the corresponding cryptographic verification.
The company noted that the snapshot demonstrated user balances across 10 digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT, maintained a minimum 1:1 backup ratio.
An additional snapshot encompassing a wider range of tokens is scheduled for Wednesday by the exchange, with the matching cryptographic verification projected to require an additional 40 to 50 hours of computation.
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Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-safu-btc-balance-halves-recovery-unclear?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
