About $6.36 billion left Binance wallets on ten blockchains on Oct 29, 2026, most of it in about 20 minutes, according to TRM Labs. Within hours, about half of it was frozen. This breakdown covers how it unfolded, what TRM found, and why only half could be frozen: USDT and USDC are token contracts whose issuers can blacklist an address, while bitcoin and ether have no issuer at all.
What happened (UTC, facts as of Nov 2, 2026):
• Oct 29, 20:05: outflows start on the XRP Ledger, then Solana, Optimism, Bitcoin, Tron and Ethereum
• ~20:23: one Ethereum transaction moves 167,464 ETH and 1.615B USDT out of a single hot wallet (TRM)
• TRM: Binance’s hot wallet had signed 50 authorizations in advance; one matched. Wallets on the other chains signed for the attacker within about half an hour
• 21:01 / 21:04: Tether freezes 971.1M USDT, Circle freezes 823M USDC. Ripple and World Liberty Financial follow
• Oct 30, 00:08: Arbitrum’s Security Council forces about $30M (8,426 ETH + 74.6M ARB) out of the attacker’s wallet on Arbitrum (TRM)
• Oct 30, 00:30: TRM counts about $2.4B in ETH and BTC “beyond any issuer’s reach”
• Nov 1: Binance says about $3B is immobilized, mostly USDT and USDC; it reopens withdrawals in phases, bitcoin first, and says company funds including SAFU now cover about 95% of affected assets
Attribution: TRM attributes the attack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor “with high confidence”; Chainalysis’s CEO called it likely. Binance hasn’t confirmed, and hasn’t published a root cause. The signing-system explanation is TRM Labs’ assessment.
This is news and commentary, not financial advice.
Sources:
TRM Labs, “North Korea Steals USD 6.36 Billion From Binance in the Largest Hack in History” (Oct 29, 2026)
trmlabs.com/resources/blog/north-korea-steals-usd-6-36-billion-from-binance-in-the-largest-hack-in-history
CoinDesk, “Binance opens crypto withdrawals in phases starting with bitcoin following $6.3 billion hack” (Nov 1, 2026)
PBS NewsHour / AP, “What to know about the $6.3B hack on Binance” (Oct 31, 2026)
How the freeze works: Circle’s FiatToken design doc (github.com/circlefin/stablecoin-evm) · USDC Terms · Tether Terms of Service · the USDT contract on Etherscan
@kaylodev on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook · © 2026 Kaylo Dev
#Binance #CryptoSecurity #TechNews
source