Binance brought customer withdrawals back online on Sunday, four days after hackers stole nearly $6.3 billion from its hot wallets in what is the biggest digital asset robbery ever recorded.
The trading platform resumed operations gradually over the weekend, starting with bitcoin before adding support for 15 different networks. This step served as the first genuine test of whether the company could weather such a massive deficit without locking users out of their funds for an extended period.
The restoration effort kicked off on Saturday. In its third recovery status report, Binance noted that it had refilled 90% of the affected sum utilizing corporate reserves. The platform tapped into a segment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users, a portion of its futures insurance reserves, and its internal treasury to purchase replacement tokens.
The allocation from the futures fund drew particular scrutiny, given that Binance stated the remaining total acts as a regulatory mandate. Furthermore, Binance released an updated proof-of-reserves audit dated October 31, providing customers with a baseline against which they can verify their balances.
Sunday’s reactivation commenced at 06:00 UTC with BTC. Binance subsequently incorporated ETH, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Tron, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Zcash, TON, and Sui. Throughout the window between 06:00 and 15:30 UTC, the exchange handled around $4.65 billion in withdrawals compared to roughly $1.01 billion in incoming deposits.
That resulted in a net withdrawal volume close to $3.64 billion, which accounts for about 2.1% of the $171 billion in assets that Binance listed in its late-October proof of reserves.
Inflows remained open during the entire rollout, and the management warned that brief processing delays might occur amid the initial wave of traffic.
Binance stated that its Sunday briefing elevated the coverage level to 95% of the impacted funds. The remaining 5% consists of less liquid assets situated outside the top ten holdings on its proof-of-reserves index. Acquiring those specific tokens at the required scale demands extra time, and the exchange mentioned it is collaborating with market partners and over-the-counter desks to finalize the acquisitions. Binance has pledged to make up the entire deficit, reiterating multiple times that clients will not absorb the financial fallout of the breach.
On Monday, Binance announced that the complete zero-knowledge proof for the October 31 audit is finalized. Account holders holding BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD, or ZEC can execute the platform’s verification tool to ensure their holdings are backed at least at a 1:1 ratio.
The validation software is open-source, and the exchange has directed users toward a comprehensive tutorial.
The platform schedules another audit snapshot encompassing a wider array of tokens for November 4, with the cryptographic proof anticipated to take between 40 and 50 hours to generate. An additional withdrawal phase is slated for Tuesday, and leadership indicated they will release further particulars once the next stage is prepared.
Binance hack background
Regarding criminal investigations, the FBI has pointed to North Korea as the perpetrator of the breach, while the U.S. Secret Service collaborates with Circle to track and freeze capital. Tether announced that approximately $1.57 billion in USDT was frozen, while Circle confirmed it locked down upwards of $800 million in USDC alongside law enforcement agencies.
The financial markets responded severely to the incident. Bitcoin dropped roughly 5% to dip under $77,000 in the hours following the exploit, while equities for Coinbase, Robinhood, Strategy, and Strive all dropped as traders evaluated the threat of exchange-wide losses across the industry.
Binance disclosed that it uncovered additional vulnerability vectors beyond the initial breach point, which it previously traced back to a compromised developer laptop. The company has not yet released a comprehensive post-mortem detailing how the hackers planned and executed the operation, which some evaluations estimate required at least 36 hours of preliminary preparation.
The final destination of approximately $3.3 billion worth of stolen funds that escaped freezing remains unexplained, and the enterprise has not outlined its expected recovery rate from that specific pool. Investigators continue monitoring wallet movements across ten distinct blockchain networks.
Originally published at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/binance-reopens-withdrawals-hack.
