KOR
▲ Binance
While Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, was having $6.3 billion (approx. 8.4 trillion won) in assets stolen, executives reportedly had no choice but to watch powerlessly.
According to the U.S. daily Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Bloomberg News on the local date of October 31, the incident took place at 4:20 p.m. on October 29, U.S. Eastern Time (11:20 p.m. United Arab Emirates time).
Binance's security team located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, detected unauthorized withdrawals exceeding $1 billion.
The security team immediately reported to management, and an emergency video conference was promptly convened.
About 100 members of the crisis response team, including top executives, logged into the meeting within minutes.
However, executives and staff could only watch in terror as assets drained from Binance accounts in real-time, the WSJ reported.
The initially estimated scale of damage was $1 billion, but it soon surged to $3 billion, and surpassed $6 billion by 4:40 p.m.
As abnormal transactions were detected, external security experts and the cryptocurrency industry also moved urgently.
Automated alert systems from blockchain analytics firms notified major cryptocurrency investors and clients worldwide of the abnormal transactions.
At 4:38 p.m., Taylor Monahan, a researcher at the non-profit security organization SEAL, urgently contacted stablecoin issuer Tether.
Tether and Circle immediately initiated procedures to track the suspicious transactions and freeze related wallets.
Binance also cooperated with cryptocurrency tracking partners TRM Labs, Chainalysis, and Elliptic to identify digital wallet addresses containing the stolen funds and joined forces to freeze the assets.
At 4:32 p.m., a post appeared on X (formerly Twitter) stating, "Unconfirmed, but there is a possibility of a massive hack at Binance."
Binance management also entered emergency response mode.
He Yi, co-CEO and partner of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, became aware of the issue via social media before going to bed and began directing damage control.
Co-CEO Richard Teng, who was staying in Hong Kong, also stayed up all night to respond.
At 5:00 p.m., the hackers deposited $60 million worth of the stolen stablecoins into the cryptocurrency lending platform Aave.
These stablecoins were used as collateral to borrow about 20,000 ethers (worth approximately $44.6 million at the time).
Unlike stablecoins, which have asset-freezing functions, they appear to have tried to avoid tracking and freezing by converting them into assets that are difficult to freeze directly from a central authority, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Platforms like Aave eventually suspended loans, but according to TRM Labs, the hackers still escaped with about $2.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets.
At 5:15 p.m., as criticism against Binance and its founder grew fierce on social media, Binance released an official statement acknowledging the hack.
Binance released an additional notice that day stating that it had covered 90% of the tokens stolen by the hackers.
(Photo provided by Binance, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.
